


Whumptober 2020: MacGyver

by holbytlanna



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: 1x07, AU Jack comes back, Accidents, Acrophobia, Adrenaline, All I have is google, And so is Mac, Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Badass Jack Dalton, Bless Jack Dalton, Blood, Broken Limbs, Burns, Can Opener, Creepy Murdoc, Drowning, Electrocution, Explosions, Gen, Giving Mac shit, Gunshot Wounds, Hallucinations, Head Injury, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt Jack, Hurt Mac, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, I am not a doctor, I know nothing, I promise it's temporary, Interrogation, Jack’s Triumphant Return, James MacGyver's A+ parenting, Knives, Let Jack Dalton Say Fuck, Manly Tears, Nightmares, PTSD, Parental Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), Platonic Cuddling, Sandbox fic, Shady Medicine, Shady science, Sleep Deprivation, Stitches, Struggling, Team as Family, Thunderstorms, Torture, We Hate James MacGyver In This House Y'all, Whipping, Whump, Whumptober 2020, blind, collapse, drugged, field medicine, fight, gunpoint, lots of concussions, pistol whipping, restrained, touch starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 56,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: My first time doing whumptober! MacGyver 2016 is my current muse (obsession), so get ready for 31 chapters of shameless MacWhump! (I try to spice it up a bit and whump some others, but let's be real here, we like hurting Mac the most)
Relationships: MacRiley if you really want it to be, Mostly just Mac and Jack bromance tho
Comments: 115
Kudos: 150
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Day 1: waking up restrained

**Author's Note:**

> My goal is to have all 31 stories written and posted on the correct days. Prolly won't happen, because I procrastinate like nobody's business, but I'll try.  
> I don't own MacGyver (gosh I'd love to though). If you don't recognise a character, I made them up. Except for Liz, in Chapter 3. She is the brainchild of my dearest friend fancyf1amingozz, whom I am using with permission and hopefully I have used well <3 love you babe, and thanks for the beta-reading!  
> Medical inaccuracies are very very likely. Sorry.  
> Questions, comments, concerns, rude remarks? Please let me know, I welcome commentary!

The first thing he noticed was a dull throbbing in his head. Then the pain in his wrists. Then cold. Jack shivered, and opened his eyes. It didn’t do a whole lot of good. It was pretty dark, wherever he was. 

He took stock of himself. The pounding in his head was annoying, but Jack could tell it wasn’t a concussion: just a headache. He could touch the ground with his feet, so he stood, taking his weight off of his wrists and shoulders.

Looking up at the chains holding him upright, looped around a heavy crossbeam, Jack shook his head. Maybe a way free would be obvious to Mac, but Jack couldn’t see it.

He sighed, trying to roll his sore shoulders, and moved his attention to his surroundings. Cold seeped through his thin t-shirt (his third favorite Metallica shirt) from the wall. It didn’t feel like a damp kind of cold. Just cold.

The dark room was bare — more like a basement than a room. Light came from a single, barred window. Jack followed the dying sunbeams until they landed on pale skin and blond hair.

Mac’s arms were chained up over his head just like Jack’s, with his back against the wall. His knees were buckled and his arms were fully extended; blood trickled down his right wrist where the cuffs were cutting into him. His head hung down onto his chest, and hair hid his face from Jack’s view. It didn’t hide the blood seeping from a nasty cut at his hairline, however.

Jack wasn’t close enough to reach him, so he had to resort to calling Mac’s name over and over again to wake his unconscious partner up.

“Mac. Mac. Maaaaac. Hey, Mac, wake up.” Maybe he could bother the kid awake. In the world’s worst Scottish brogue, he called out “Angus MacGyver! Burger MacScottishname?”  _ Nothing? Jeez. _ “Oh Carl’s Juuuuuuniorrrr~”

After a few minutes of the wildest (and dumbest) nicknames he could come up with, Jack started getting worried. He dropped the singsong tone and nicknames.

“Mac! Come on, man, wake up!” Jack rattled the chains as best he could, even tried stomping his feet on the concrete floor to make some noise.

Finally,  finally , Mac groaned. Jack saw his fingers twitch, and watched as Mac got unsteadily onto his feet. The mess of blond hair lifted, and Mac blinked and grimaced at the sunlight shining directly on his face. “Jack?”

Jack bit down on a sigh of relief. “Hey, hoss, welcome back to the land of the living. You had me worried, I’ve been callin’ you for ages.”

He saw Mac wince as he tried to roll his eyes. Jack frowned. “Mac, you okay, brother? How’re you feelin’?”

“...Not great,” Mac mumbled. And truthfully, he didn’t look like he was feeling all that great either. His normally-bright blue eyes looked a bit dull and confused, and he was a few shades paler than usual. The cut in the kid’s head had bled down the side of his face, and there were even a few drops staining Mac’s shirt.  _ He’s not gonna like that, he likes that shirt…  _

“My head hurts.”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I bet it does. Something tells me you’ve got a concussion, pal.”

Mac grumbled to himself, something that sounded suspiciously like “wouldn’t that just be my damn luck?” And then he flexed his hands above him, looking around.

“Whoa now, hey, hoss, you should probably be holding still. Don’t jostle that noggin any more than necessary, huh? Let me think our way out of this one.”

Mac smiled. “Believe me, I would love to see that, and to rest this headache, but it isn’t too bad. It can wait. Right now…” he trailed off with his tongue between his teeth, standing on tiptoes for leverage, “I’ve got a plan.”

Mac’s hands both came free, and Jack laughed out loud. “Whoo! They’re gonna have to try harder than that to keep you locked away! That might just be a new record, kiddo, even with a concussion.”

Mac chuckled. “I think the concussion gives me bonus points or something,” he said, stumbling over to Jack. 

“Alright, sure. Now get me down and let’s blow this pop stand!”


	2. Day 2: in the hands of the enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ngl, I went dark. I saw “pick who dies” and couldn’t resist.

They had broken Mac’s fingers a week ago, after their first escape attempt.

He had picked the lock on their cell door with nothing but a nail that had been stuck randomly in the wall. And Stanton — the week’s latest up-and-coming terrorist — had deduced that without his fingers, Mac wouldn’t be able to repeat the performance.

Not that it mattered. The next cell they were put into had a mechanical lock, which Mac couldn’t have picked even if he could use his fingers. No, this door was Riley’s. She did some fancy wiring trick to open it, but they got just as far as they did last time.

And Stanton waterboarded her for it. Well, his minions did. No way John Stanton himself would dirty his hands with the filthy water.

Jack had tried to take the waterboarding for her, attempted to convince them he was the one who had hacked them out of their cell. All he got for his efforts were waterboardings for the whole team.

Now they were all coughing painfully, locked in a cell with a heavy keyed padlock on the other side.  _ Home, sweet home _ .

Jack’s ribs ached. He had sung himself hoarse trying to ignore the beatings. He was pretty sure at least two ribs were broken. And he had run out of AC/DC songs.

The three of them were pulled out intermittently for whatever Stanton thought would get them to talk. The funny thing was, they didn’t even know the intel he wanted: he thought they were CIA. But despite them telling him they didn’t have what he wanted, he still tried to get them to talk.

This time, when the door clanged open, they came right for Jack.  _ Weird, they usually go for Mac first. Whatever. _ Jack wasn’t complaining. The more energy these goons spent on him, the less they spent on his kids.

His kids. Such a funny notion to Jack. He had the worst luck in the world with women —  _ well, maybe not as bad as Mac _ — and somehow he still ended up basically a father to two of the best young people in the world. It baffled Jack, honestly, how lucky he was. And it was tearing him apart having to watch the pair of them in this place.

The goons dragged him to a different room than the one they were usually tortured in. This one had a cushy armchair, in which sat Stanton, and a rickety folding chair, which Jack was shoved into.

“Well, Jack, so far you and your team have been entirely uncooperative. That makes me unhappy. You have intel I want—”

“For the last time, we don’t have your damn intel. We aren’t even CIA, man!”

Jack’s outburst earned him a backhanded slap.

“You have the intel I need, and you  will tell me.”

To be honest, they had considered giving the lunatic fake info. But it would’ve been pointless. What Stanton wanted were access codes and passwords, so he could easily and quickly have found out that they had given him fakes, and punish them accordingly.

“...and it’s come to my attention…” Stanton was somewhat long-winded. Jack tuned back in. “...that I might be going about this the wrong way. Even if I torture one, the other two don’t give anything but excuses up. So I’ve decided it’s time for an ultimatum.”

_ Oh no. That sounds bad _ .

“Which of your teammates do you like… the least?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Jack snarled, furious at the thought that he would have favourites, and simultaneously terrified for the direction he thought the conversation was going.

Stanton smiled smugly. Infuriatingly. “Well, Jack, it seems that this is the only way to get information. You care about those kids, that’s obvious. To keep them alive, you’d give me intel, right?”

“I can’t give you what I don’t have!” Jack cried out.

Stanton’s smile never wavered, even as he drew out a pistol. “Then I’m afraid, Jack, that this is for you.”

Jack looked at him like he’d sprouted another head. “You give me a gun, I blow your brains out.”

“Oh, no,” Stanton laughed. “You don’t get the gun until you’re back in your cell with your team. Where you will pick one to live, and shoot the other.”

Jack’s heart dropped into his shoes.  _ He can’t be serious. _ “Bullshit. I’m not gonna do it. I’d rather shoot myself than either of them.”

“And what do you think will happen once you’re dead? You think I’ll stop torturing them? No, Jack, suicide isn’t a great option, if you want to protect them. You’ll have to choose one. Think of it this way: which one do you want to offer an escape to? If you shoot the girl, she’ll be free from waterboardings forever. If you shoot the boy, he’ll never be electrocuted again.” Stanton leaned forward. “You can save one of them, Jack.”

With those words echoing in his ears, he was marched back to the cell. The pistol was thrown in after him. Jack didn’t even look at it, he simply stalked over to his corner.

Mac eyed the pistol, confused. “Jack, why’d they give us a gun?”

Riley’s eyes lit up. “Mac, could we use it to escape?” She examined the gun. “Only one shot in it, but could we take it apart, maybe?”

Mac looked like his brain was running double-time, and Jack hoped desperately that his boy genius could think their way out of this so he didn’t have to do the unthinkable.  _ God, please don’t make me... _

Mac reached for the gun, but drew his hands back with a hiss as his broken fingers reminded him that he couldn’t use them. “No, I don’t think... no, not unless we had another bullet or two, or maybe some tape.”

Riley cursed, because they had neither, and Jack hung his head. Mac walked over (still a little shaky from the last time they had zapped him) and crouched next to Jack.

“Jack, why did they give us a gun?” he asked again. And Jack didn’t want to answer. Couldn’t bear to tell his kids what he had been told to do. But now both pairs of eyes were on him. Cool blue, and deep brown. Both so tired, but so trusting.  _ Please, don’t make me do this. _

“Stanton, he... Well, he’s a sick bastard, is what he is. He said we weren’t giving him his intel fast enough. So he’s trying to speed up the process. He... he told me…”  _ Don’t make me _ …

Mac’s eyes cleared with understanding. “He wants you to kill one of us.”

Jack closed his eyes, nodding.

“Well, that’s easy,” Mac continued. “My fingers are broken, and they’re never going to heal normally if they’re not taken care of soon. What good am I without them?”

Jack’s eyes snapped open in anger and fear, but Riley beat him to the lecture.

“Absolutely not, Mac! You’re everything to Phoenix. Without you, there  is no Phoenix, and it’s your brilliant brain, not your hands! I’m just a hacker, who replaced another hacker after she died. You can find a replacement for me just as easily. There’s no replacement for you.” She looked to Jack. He refused to meet her eyes. “I’m the only choice, Jack. Do this, and you two have a better shot getting out of here.”

Mac put the gun into Jack’s hand, trying to make eye contact. “Jack, no. She’s your family, she’s basically your daughter. I won’t let you do that.” He took Jack’s gun-hand in his own trembling, broken hands, and brought the barrel of the gun up between his eyes. “Just... do it quickly?”

Jack choked on a sob, tearing the gun away from Mac’s head. “No! No, I won’t do it! I can’t, kids, I can’t do this! There has to be a way out, something—”

“There’s no other way out!” Mac shouted. “I’m the best choice no matter how you look at it! Riley still has her mom, and I have no family who’d miss me—”

“What do you think we are, genius?!” Riley yelled.

Mac stopped up short, looking stricken at her words, but steeled himself and continued. “You have to do this, Jack, so you and Riley can get free and go home.” He repositioned the gun, resting his forehead on the muzzle and closing his eyes. “Please.”

Jack’s hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t fire. His eyes were so full of tears he couldn’t see.  _ Please, no, I can’t. No.  _

“No!” 

Jack woke with a start, sitting bolt upright.  _ Where the hell…?  _ He looked around him, taking in the ashes of the fire pit and the half-deconstructed gizmos strewn everywhere.  _ Mac’s house. _ He was on Mac’s couch. 

Jack ran a hand through his hair and over his face, not surprised to find tears there. This was far from the first time he’d dreamed of his kids’ deaths, but this nightmare had been a doozy. Terribly real, and made more so by the fact that it very well could have happened.

Jack, Mac and Riley had indeed been captured together. They did try to escape and were punished. It took almost two weeks for Phoenix to bust their asses out, and those were some of the hardest two weeks of Jack’s life, having to watch his kids get hurt. But they had made it. Stanton hadn’t given him that horrible ultimatum, all three of them had made it out, made it home. It had been two days since their rescue, they were all okay.  _ Right? _

Suddenly Jack doubted his memory, and desperately needed to check.  _ Riley should be in the guest room.  _ They had refused to be separated, so they all crashed at Mac’s house. Jack took the couch and Mac was in his room and Riley should be…

She was. Jack cracked the guest room door open just enough to see his girl. She was asleep, curled up on her side with her dark hair tied back. Jack could hear her breathing softly, still a little raspy and congested. But definitely alive. For only the second time she had been taken captive, she had done so well. Jack was proud, and beyond relieved, that she had made it out okay.

He closed the door softly, so not to wake her — they all needed as much sleep as they could get — and tiptoed to Mac’s room. He knew Mac was a light sleeper, so Jack took extra care in opening the door.

And there was Mac, sprawled across the bed. He always slept like that, for as long as Jack had known him: long limbs everywhere, blankets kicked halfway off the bed, and snoring softly on his back. Jack smiled at the familiar sight, and closed the door again.

They had made it. Mac’s fingers would heal, Riley’s cough would go away, and Jack’s nightmares would fade. His kids were safe, now. They would be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, having it all be a nightmare is a total cop-out. I know. But I couldn’t bring myself to have jack actually shoot one, so it was either nightmare or rescue in the nick of time.


	3. Day 3: my way or the highway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manhandled/gunpoint/forced to knees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was at a total loss for what to write this time. Thankfully, fancyf1amingozz came to my rescue (and let me borrow her OC). She’s got a MacGyver story up, y’all should check it out!

This is far from her first mission. She knows that things go wrong and that unexpected company often shows up when it’s least convenient. And, if she’s honest, she didn’t expect her activities to go unnoticed. Shooting an ambassador tends to draw attention. So when she runs right into a room full of what look like minimum-wage mall cops, she grimaces but prepares to fight her way through. 

But before she even swings a punch, someone crashes the party. Literally. He falls through the ceiling, bringing tiles and what looks like a piece of a vent down with him. He gets to his feet clumsily, looks at the surroundings and sighs. “Okay, Jack, we might have a problem.” 

Everyone is looking at this guy now as he keeps talking to someone through what appears to be a comm unit.

“No, not that kind of prob— no, stay where you are! Ugh,” he groans, slapping a palm to his forehead as yet another person falls from the ceiling.

And now all three parties — the hired security, the gatecrashers, and the covert operative — are staring at each other. _It’s almost comical_ , she thinks to herself, before she breaks the silence, and the arm of the nearest security man.

A total free-for-all breaks out, and Liz (though it’s been many years since anyone’s used her given name) uses the chaos to escape. But unfortunately, her exit doesn’t go completely unnoticed.

The blond man who had fallen from the ceiling first chases after her. She almost chuckles. _Clearly he doesn’t know who I am or what I do for a living._ She decides to have a little fun, and leads him in a roundabout path out of the building to a poorly-lit back alley. _Cliché, but it’ll do_.

And there, she turns on her heel, using the young man’s forward momentum from running to lend strength to her punch to his jaw. Maybe the guy doesn’t know better than to bother an assassin while she’s working, and then follow her into a dark alley, but hey. Never too late to learn.

—————

Mac flatters himself to think he’s on the stronger and fitter end of average, but his opponent is  fast. She — and it’s definitely a woman, Mac can tell, even in the heat of a fight, from the slim, 5’3 build and the blonde hair braided back — she seems somehow to be more than human. Her reflexes are catlike, her punches are strong, and Mac is finding himself struggling to hold his own.

Now, Mac has no manly ego issues when it comes to fighting, which means he would feel no shame if a woman were to best him. It also tends to mean he doesn’t go any easier on an attacker if she happens to be female. Some of the scariest people he knows are women — he’s reminded daily of how lucky he is that Matty and Riley are his friends and not enemies, and he’s come across more than his share of female BadGuys. But he still thinks that, since he’s half a foot taller and must have at least twenty or thirty pounds on this mystery woman, he would have the upper hand in this fight.

He is proven wrong by a kick to his knee. Which  hurts. Mac has never broken his knee before (leg, sure, ankle, once, but never his knees) and he thinks now that it might be. And when a punch to the gut makes him drop down onto his knees and his vision goes grey for a moment, he sure it’s broken.

_Jack might have to carry me to exfil. If he ever gets here..._ Jack was running late, and should’ve been there with Mac by now, helping him escape the botched op. Botched by the woman who had literally brought him to his knees in a matter of minutes.

But she doesn’t seem to be stopping there. She hooks a black-booted foot around his legs and swipes them out from under him. Mac falls in an undignified and painful heap, landing hard on his ass.

Before he can so much as blink, two hands, whose small size belie their inhuman strength, ram him by the shoulders into the brick wall of the alley. His head snaps back, and he feels the vibrations of the impact all through his body. Especially in his knee with all the jostling. The fact that she kicks his leg aside to kneel in front of him doesn’t help.

He struggles, and in an instant, his hands are caught by one of hers, and she pins them right at the top of his sternum. The manubrium, if any of his biology classes have stuck with him. Her other hand is on his shoulder, and as he continues to struggle, her right knee comes up against his chest beneath their hands, pinning him effectively. Very effectively, actually, because her foot is now in an excellent position to kick him down south. He doesn’t need to remember high school bio this time to know that that would hurt.

But none of this is as concerning to Mac as the gun. He has no idea where it came from, or how it suddenly appeared in his assailant’s free hand, pressing flush against his chest. _Thigh holster,_ his rattled brain supplies, but is silenced by her voice.

“You shouldn’t have come here. It isn’t your business, I took care of it. Butt out of my op.” Her voice is somewhat deeper than Mac was expecting. Her gunmetal blue eyes bore into his, and Mac’s head continues to throb. _I’m probably concussed_ , he thinks. _Her op? Where_ _is_ _Jack? He should be here by now._

As if in answer to the thought, Mac hears running footsteps and Jack’s voice calling his name.

“Shit,” the woman mutters, and without a moment's hesitation, brings the gun away from Mac’s chest and bashes him in the temple with it. The pressure from her knee is gone; she lets him fall. The last thing he hears is Jack calling his name, and gunfire.


	4. Day 4: running out of time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm a sucker for suffocation. And hypothermia. So I did both :)  
> I didn't write this to be MacRiley, but I guess it could be if you want it to be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always had a mild fear of being trapped in one of the freezers at work (I work in a small grocery store). So that's where this comes from. I usually do a lot more research for fics like this, but I was running out of time to write it. I've been working a lot and staying up late to write, so this is not my best work, sorry :)

**25 minutes**

People in early stages of hypothermia generally don’t even realise that there’s anything wrong because of how gradually the symptoms set in. People in final stages of hypothermia dismiss anything being wrong because suddenly they feel irrationally warm. 

Mac, on the other hand, knew exactly what was happening to him, and had no phantom feelings of warmth — even though he’d give an awful lot to feel warm just then.

When he had first been thrown into the walk-in freezer of the grocery store owned by the man he was on mission to protect, Mac had tried to bust down the door. No luck, of course. It hadn’t worked in the diner freezer with Riley, all those months ago, why would it work now? No, brute force wouldn’t work (though the thought made him smile when he remembered his “brute force codebreaker” that Jack had protested wasn’t “brute force” enough to suit him).

He tried to use the largest blade on his knife to jimmy the door latch open, but the men who had tossed him in here had apparently given their seemingly-impromptu kidnapping a good deal of forethought. They had broken off the inside latch, and jammed the door. Mac’s lovely little SAK couldn’t get him out either. 

After Mac had exhausted every way he could think of to escape, he tried to focus on bunkering down. His team knew where he was, and once he didn’t report on time (in two hours), they’d know something was wrong and go looking for him. So he just had to not freeze to death in that time. And there was also the problem of the rapidly-shrinking supply of breathable air. 

So he did what he did best: he catalogued his surroundings, and tried to make the best of them. His body temperature would drop very quickly, losing heat the fastest from his head. So he put the hood of his coat up, and zipped the jacket up tight to insulate himself. Plastic, another good insulator. A curtain of thick plastic strips hung in the doorframe. Mac cut them down and built himself a nice cozy suit.  _ Cozy here being relative _ , Mac thought as he wrangled the cold plastic to wrap around his body. He couldn’t sit on the frigid metal of the floor without losing a lot of heat, and he would rather not stand the full two hours if he could help it, so he sat on a conveniently empty wooden pallet. Still cold, but not nearly as conductive as the aluminum floor. 

And now the fun part. Waiting. 

Although honestly, Mac was more concerned about the whole suffocating thing than hypothermia. He’d trained for extreme weather, he could handle himself in the cold, even if he didn’t like it. But suffocating wasn’t something he could do a whole lot about. The freezer was decent-sized, so Mac should be able to breathe for the two-ish hours, but it might be a near thing; especially given the minutes Mac had spent trying to force the door down. That kind of exertion cost him a lot of breathable air.

**45 minutes**

It was cold. Mac had been all over the world, in all kinds of weather, but he could say with almost absolute certainty that he had never been this cold. He knew it was because he couldn’t get up and move around — not without compromising his oxygen supply.

_ Breathable air is approximately 20% oxygen, but it’s CO2 that’s more deadly. Once the carbon dioxide levels in a space reach just 2%, effects of the poisoning become noticeable. And any higher than 5% concentration is fatal. _ The more CO2 he breathed out, the faster he would reach that point. And he was already beginning to feel a little lightheaded.  _ Though that could also just be from the cold… _

Basically, this whole thing sucked. 

**67 minutes**

Since he couldn’t move around, Mac’s hyperactive brain began running numbers. He started with the rather pertinent (he felt) question of “how long will I survive in here, given a- the amount of oxygen in the freezer, b- the amount of air a person typically breathed at rest, c- the temperature, et cetera,” but he didn’t get very far into that one. He didn’t know exactly how long he had spent getting himself settled in his plastic cocoon, or how much air he had been breathing then. It would all be guesswork. Plus, it was kinda morbid.

He moved on to making complex math problems for himself, and then running through a step-by-step dismantling of Jack’s precious GTO — which he would never actually let Mac take apart, even if he promised to put it back together. He calculated the speed of a plane from LAX to Romania (Riley had been reading Dracula), and threw in a lot of fun variables such as amount of passengers, weight of cargo, turbulence, and other factors to complicate the equations. 

It was only when Mac slipped up, making a glaring error in his mental math that he really shouldn’t have, that he realised that something was wrong.  _ Well, more wrong than this already is _ . When the electrical pulses in the brain get cold, they go slower. Hypothermia was beginning to set in. 

**79 minutes** ****

Mac was shivering like mad. He knew it was his body trying to warm him up, but he still resented the chattering teeth that aggravated a growing headache. The combined effects of increasing carbon dioxide and decreasing internal temperature were unpleasant. He couldn’t see straight. The hands on his watch looked the same length, but he was sure it had been at least an hour _. One more to go. _

**95 minutes**

Mac had stopped shivering. Halfheartedly, he rubbed his hands up and down numb arms, but it didn’t do anything. He had stopped being able to think straight a while ago. All he had were iced-over memories. Fire-pit nights, with the warmth of the fire and a beer and his family. The Sandbox: blazing hot days and nights spent talking with Jack. Even the heat from an exploding IED was welcome.

**103 minutes**

Mac’s thoughts had turned from physical warmth to emotional warmth. Times when he had been the happiest. He thought of his mother humming lullabies at night when little Angus was afraid of monsters in the dark. He thought of Jack. Most of his happiest memories had been with Jack. And the rest of his little family. Bozer’s steadfast friendship and optimism, and Riley…

He could almost see her. Right there with him, in the dim light of the freezer, she sat on the pallet beside him. She smiled, taking his frigid hand with her own. 

“Riles?” he murmured. His voice was slurring, and his heart rate was way down. “Riles, what are you doing here?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot — which happened often, usually when Mac tried to do anything with a computer — and said “Don’t you remember? The owner of the store needed protecting. Retired ex-military, wanted by terrorists. He took out one of their cells, so they want to kill him. You’re protecting him.”

Mac huffed weakly. “Can’t protect anyone, not in here.” Riley wasn’t shivering. Was she hypothermic? Mac knew he must be, because he couldn’t feel his hands or feet, and his chest ached. She didn’t look cold though. She looked normal, cool and as devil-may-care as she always was. 

And that was Mac’s first clue that she wasn’t really there at all. He was talking to an empty freezer, because his mind was starved both of oxygen and heat. He couldn’t bring himself to wonder if there would be permanent damage when Bozer found him. He couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Riley shouldn’t be there, she was in the War Room, watching the ex-military man’s every move, to make sure he stayed safe. But at least with her here, he wasn’t so lonely.

**119 minutes**

“Riles… I think I’m… I might be dying.”

The words were barely coherent. Mac was fading fast. 

“Hold on, Mac. Bozer’s coming, hold on just a bit longer.”

He was so  tired . He wanted to hold on, really he did, but he also wanted to sleep. He was dizzy, and numb all over. He laid down across the pallet. 

“You shouldn’t do that, the more of your body is against something cold, the faster your body heat will diffuse into it.” Why did Riley suddenly sound an awful lot like his nerdy subconscious? “You need to get up, you’re already far too cold.”

“‘M tired. M’head hurts.”

Mac closed his eyes, focusing on breathing. In just the past few minutes, it had felt harder and harder to breathe. Riley didn’t seem to be having any trouble breathing. She didn’t let anything about their surroundings affect her, even though he had been the one to get them stuck in here. 

“‘M sorry. About the diner. Shouldn’t’ve blown it up. Should’ve found another way. Now you’re stuck in here too.” He opened his eyes to look at her. She looked sad. He wished she wasn’t. 

He thought he felt her fingers ghosting through his hair. And as he blinked his eyes closed again, he could almost imagine that it was his mom’s hand, running through his hair just like when he was little. Almost too little to remember. He smiled softly.

He felt his heartbeat pounding. His heart was working too hard to get oxygen to his cells through his sluggish blood. But he had something to do, something he needed to do. Something to wait for? Someone? Why was he waiting, who needed him?

He couldn’t remember.

“Sorry… Riles…” 

  
  


**137 minutes**

Bozer had scoured the whole damn grocery store for Mac after he had missed the meeting and hadn’t responded to any communication. He even went as far as calling for him over the all-store page. He was nowhere to be found. The last place he needed to check was the freezer. He hoped Mac wasn’t in there, he knew Mac didn’t love the cold. 

But sure enough, when he cleared the equipment barricading the door and opened it with a rush of stale air, he saw Mac. He was laid back on a wood pallet, his long legs stretched out on the icy floor. Bozer skidded over to him, calling out.

Bozer had never seen anyone’s lips actually turn blue; he had thought that was just an overdramatic cliche. But Mac’s lips had indeed gone blue. He showed no sign of waking, even as Bozer called his name and patted his freezing cheeks. He needed out of there, somewhere warm, and fast. Bozer shucked Mac out of the ridiculous plastic contrivance he had wrapped around himself, and picked him up. 

Mac was no easy burden for Bozer to bear, but bear him he did, and gladly, because every breath Mac shuddered against Bozer’s chest was a breath that meant Mac was still alive.

**The next day**

Mac was lying in a hospital bed. If he had been conscious, he would have complained, and would already be trying to escape. Fortunately for the nurses tending him, he was still asleep.

He had been severely hypothermic. A natural by-product of being kept for a few hours in -10 degree conditions. He had also needed a few hours on a nasal cannula, to get oxygen back into his body. It had been a rough night. As limbs slowly, painfully warmed up, Mac had stirred in his sleep, crying out for Riley, for Jack, for Bozer, for his mom. And he apologised over and over for trapping Riley in the freezer with him, and for not being able to get them out.

The doctors said that oxygen deprivation had messed with his head a bit, merging his current situation with the one in his past. He wasn’t able to differentiate between the two occasions. 

Morning brought the sun streaming in through the windows, right onto Mac’s face. He woke up with a grimace, blinking stupidly and bringing his hand up to shield his face. Raising his hand tugged on an IV line, and Mac frowned. Where was he?

“Hey, man, don’t pull on that.”  _ Bozer _ . “You need that IV, the doc said it was important.” 

Mac huffed. “‘S probably just saline. Not that important.” His voice was rough, and Bozer handed him a dixie-cup of lukewarm water. Swallowing was painful, but the water helped. Mac looked around. “Where’s Riley? Is she okay?”

Bozer seemed to be conflicted, opening and closing his mouth once before actually speaking. “She… Mac, she was never there. She was in the War Room the whole time, man. The doctors say you might have been hallucinating.”

Mac frowned. Now that he thought about it, Riley did seem a little odd in the freezer. She didn’t seem affected by the cold at all. And he had certainly been deprived of oxygen long enough to cause hallucinations…

Explaining his thought process would have taken a lot of time and energy. And while Mac was no longer trying to survive before a clock ran down, he was still running on empty. So he settled for saying “That explains a lot,” and going back to sleep.

His subconscious had brought Riley to him when he needed her. She kept him alive, kept him talking and thinking and breathing (even if he was breathing in unhealthy amounts of CO2). He was glad she hadn’t actually been there. One time locked in a freezer was plenty for anybody, though it was just his luck to have been there twice. She hadn’t been in any danger, warm in the War Room, watching out for him.


	5. Day 5: Where do you think you're going?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we have an almost-failed escape, based far too heavily on Mission Impossible 4 :)

Mac slammed into the crash bar of the door (infinitely grateful that it had a crash bar, so he didn’t waste valuable seconds wrenching it open). He was running full-tilt through an office building, with a flash drive full of arms-dealer info on it stuffed into his pocket. Riley was speaking into his comm, giving him directions. And the arms dealers he had stolen the info from were hot on his heels.

“Riley, am I almost there?” he shouted.

“Yeah, take your next left, and the second door you go through takes you right outside onto the roof.”

“The roof?! How the hell am I supposed to get out of here from the roof?”

Riley sounded annoyed over comms, but Mac could tell that she wasn’t annoyed with him, just the general situation. “I don’t know, Mac, you’ll figure something out. But it was either this or you try to fight your way back down through the building, and then fight your way out against the four guys guarding the door.”

As Mac burst through the last door and sunlight seared his eyes, he groaned. He was three stories high. He stepped over to the edge of the roof, looking down. He immediately wished he hadn’t.

“I think I might have preferred the fight.”

Matty chuckled, her voice joining Riley’s. “Too late for that now, Blondie, better hurry and find a way down. Your exfil’s in half an hour, and it’s about twenty minutes from your location.”

There were no drainpipes, no fire escapes, no  _ nothing  _ close enough for Mac to use to climb down. And just looking down the sides of the building to find a way down was giving him serious vertigo. He hoped he could stave off his mounting fear until after he got himself down: his brain didn’t function very well when he was panicking. 

So far, his best solution was a dumpster on the ground. He could jump, and it could break his fall enough that he might not get seriously injured. But words could not  _ begin  _ to express how little Mac wanted to jump off the building into a dumpster. Not that he had any problems with dumpsters, for the most part. One man’s trash was often Mac’s treasure. But jumping more than thirty feet into one? No thanks. 

But it was that, or eating asphalt. Or lead, if he stayed up on the roof too long, and the guys chasing him caught up. He just had to man up and jump. 

He looked down again at the dumpster, gauging the distance, running math in his head for velocity and also the human capacity to survive an impact. He would probably be okay. He would most likely survive. Of course, he would most likely break at least two bones, but that was a small price to pay for the intel in his pocket.

He steeled himself, closing his eyes. He tried to ignore the wind that picked up around him, blowing his hair wild.  _ You can do this, you can do this, it’s only a thirty-foot drop into a dumpster, you’ve done crazier things _ . 

But he found he could not will his legs to move. He just stood at the edge, breathing hard. He knew he was running out of time, he knew he had to just man up and get it over with, but his body and brain seemed to have disconnected from each other. Riley was saying something into his earpiece, but he couldn’t distinguish it from the roaring of blood in his ears.

Fortunately, Mac’s brain was jarred back to his present state by the loud bang of the door opening. Or maybe not so fortunate after all: there were now four goons staring him down. At least two of them had guns, that Mac could see. They weren’t trained on him just yet. The guards knew they had Mac cornered. Unless he jumped, he would have nowhere to go. They would easily apprehend him because he was unarmed and alone, and they would take back the flash drive and probably hurt him and certainly kill him. And then continue selling modified weapons.

_ Nope, not today. _

Mac raised his hands above his head, making as if to surrender. Then, not daring to allow himself time for second thoughts, he flung himself from the roof, praying that his aim was accurate and that he wouldn’t splat onto the asphalt. 

Falling was very high up on Mac’s list of least-favourite things. It always seemed to take longer than it should. Mac had done the math; he should have only been falling for a second or two. But it was an eternity of racing heart and gasping breath and suddenly jarring impact. He landed hard in the dumpster, and there was definitely a loud, painful crack as his leg crumpled beneath his weight. 

As if in answer to the loud sound, gunshots went off. Moving sent flares of pain through his whole body, but Mac had to move or he would be shot. And then he would just be captured and killed with only a broken leg to show for his escape attempt. He dragged himself out of the dumpster and gritted his teeth against a yelp as he began to limp-run away. 

“Matty. I’m on the ground,’ he gasped. “Where’s my exfil, how do I get there from here?”

As Matty and Riley relayed directions and Mac did his best to follow them quickly, he reflected on the sad truth that this had been far from his worst escape. He was conscious and walking, with comms intact and the flash drive still in his pocket. And, if he hurried, he could still make his exfil chopper. Which wouldn’t do his still-racing heart any favours, but hey, he’d rather face down his acrophobia than trigger-happy arms dealers any day. 

_ Really, that could have gone so much worse _ .


	6. Day 6: “please”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today’s prompt was “please,” and I went for the angsts. Here we have a sad Mac trying to deal with Jack’s impending reassignment. Loosely inspired by Flowing_River’s “I Won’t Leave You” and also by a few recent conversations I’ve had.

Mac was exhausted. The past week or so had really taken a lot out of him. He couldn’t seem to separate his work from his life, and his life from his work. Maybe he didn’t have a life outside of work. All the emotions bled together.

Wolfe and Hermans were gone. An op went bad, and the inseparable pair of TAC guys were gone before he knew it. And two of Mac’s favorite lab techs were transferring — one headed to CIA forensics, the other was going halfway across the country: reassigned because her talents were needed more somewhere else.

And Jack. Jack was going to leave him. He hadn’t said anything about it yet, they hadn’t talked about it, but Mac knew. It was inevitable. Jack’s skill set was way beyond what was required to watch his back. Of course Jack would move on to bigger and better things. Mac was happy for him, he really was. Proud, too. Proud that Jack was going to be trusted with a mission this big, this important.

It was selfish of Mac to want to hold on. He knew change was inevitable. That no good thing could last forever. All the plans that he and Jack had ever made together had become speculation.  _ If _ they survive this op,  _ when _ they took a vacation... ifs and whens that turned into statements they made out of habit instead of actually believing they’d come true. 

Because how could they, now?

Mac had a very long list of people that had left him. It was burned into his brain. His mom. His dad. His grandfather. Frankie, Jill, army friends who had given their lives for their country. DXS and Phoenix friends who had gone. Cage had left (he couldn’t be upset at her for that, though, she had been hurt). Really, he couldn’t be mad at them. He knew most of them didn’t have a choice. And even if they did, they weren’t leaving  him . Mac wasn’t so egotistical as to imagine that he even figured into their calculations. There was nothing personal in it. 

It still felt personal, somehow.

As he sat on his couch, stewing in self-pity (which he hated), Mac listened to Jack ramble on and on about nothing important. Which made it immeasurably important to Mac, that Jack wanted to share even silly little ideas with him. Even the ones that would never get off the ground. Mac tried to pretend everything was fine, that he wasn’t devastated that his and Jack’s time together now had a countdown timer attached that even he couldn’t disarm.

Jack seemed oblivious, still talking. A long time ago, Mac had thought Jack liked the sound of his own voice. Now, he knew that Jack talked because he hated silence, so he filled it anyway he could.

Finally, Mac’s monosyllabic responses — barely acknowledgment that Jack was still talking — seemed to register with Jack. Mac found himself subject to Jack’s cross-examination glare, the one that made Mac squirm and feel like he couldn’t hide anything from Jack.

“What’s eatin’ you, hoss?”

Mac really didn’t want to tell Jack. Saying it out loud would reveal too much. But he had never been able to lie very well when Jack had him pinned with that specific glare. So he opted for partial truth.

“Just sad. About Hermans and Wolfe, from the mission this week. And did you know that Maya and Beau from the lab are going, too? They’re transferring out. I’m gonna have to babysit Maya’s project, she asked me to…” Mac trailed off. He hoped he hadn’t conveyed too much. His near-crippling feeling of loss for the four of them was natural, but it still felt embarrassing to be so worked up over it.

Something told Mac he hadn’t been entirely successful at keeping all his emotions locked away, because Jack sat up and scootched nearer. “That ain’t all of it. Is it?” he asked softly.

Mac was miserable. He didn’t want to do this to Jack, he didn’t want to cling. “I guess... I’m just gonna miss you, man. That’s all.”  _ Don’t cry, it’ll ruin everything if you cry. _ “With the whole Kovacs thing. Don’t get me wrong!” Mac backtracked at Jack’s strange expression. He couldn't quite read it. Something between sad and hurt. “I’m happy for you, you’re going to lead a really important mission by yourself, and that’s... that’s huge. There’s no one better for the job.” Mac swallowed hard to try and clear the aching pressure in his throat. “I’m just. I’ll miss you, big guy.”

Fighting back tears was proving difficult, and Mac wanted nothing more in that moment than to just let go. To sob all his anxiety and sorrow and fear out. He wanted Jack to hold him. He would have given anything for that.

But he couldn’t do that, couldn’t break down like that. He was an adult, for crying out loud, and he needed to act like one. His father would be ashamed of him.

Jack put his hand on Mac's shoulder. The firm, warm touch was something, but not nearly enough. “Mac, I wish I didn’t have to go. I don’t want to lead this op.”

That had been the last thing that Mac had expected to hear. “You… Jack, this is a step up, a big one. They’ve got you moving on, to bigger and better things. More important things. Why aren’t you happy about that?” Mac hardly dared believe it. He wouldn’t let himself think that Jack would want to stay, just for him. It was an unbelievably selfish wish.

Jack looked at Mac like he had lost his mind. “‘Bigger and better?’ Mac, I don’t want ‘bigger and better.’ There’s nothing ‘more important’ for me to do than to have your six. Keeping you safe, that’s what I do. Just thinking that I’m gonna leave and someone else is going to be watching you... It kinda scares me, man.”

Mac couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in his eyes. Jack noticed. “Oh, Mac, you thought I wanted to be reassigned? That I would be happy to leave you? Oh, Mac.” And Jack ran a hand through Mac’s hair, ruffling it.

If Mac had thought James would be disappointed in how emotional Mac was being, it was nothing to how he knew James would react to how much Mac wanted to lean into the comfort of Jack’s hand. No one ever really touched him. Even with Jack, how touchy he was, he seemed to respect the boundaries Mac set up when they first met. Mac never expressly sought out touch. James hadn’t been a very touchy-feely sort of guy. The only comforting touch Mac had in his childhood were fading memories of his mother, and the warm hugs Mrs. Bozer would give when Mac stayed over.

No, Mac didn’t ever ask for physical comfort. But in that moment, he was desperate for it. In that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care what James would think of him. All he knew was that Jack was leaving him. So he cried.

“Oh, kiddo, it’s okay. I’m here, I’ve got you. What do you need, Mac?” Jack’s hands were on his shoulders, and he seemed apprehensive. “Do you... is it okay if I hold you?”

“Please,” Mac choked out, and before he even got the word out, he was enveloped in strong arms.

Jack let him cry into his third favorite Rolling Stones shirt, all the while murmuring reassurances. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay. I’ve got you, I’m right here.”

Mac’s breathing hiccuped. “But you- you won’t be-e,” he gasped.

The two of them both felt Jack’s heaving sigh. “I know. I’m leaving soon. But hey, you listen. You listen to me. You listening?” Mac nodded. “I’m coming back. I’m gonna come back to you, Mac, because you are my job. Not this Kovacs fellow. My number one gig will always be keeping you safe.” Jack stroked a hand through Mac’s hair softly, and said with a chuckle, “You can’t get rid of me this easily, hoss. I’ll always come back for you.”

They fell asleep like that, holding each other on the couch, reassuring each other with their continued presence. Jack would be leaving, but he would never be gone. Nothing could keep him away from Mac for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully not too sappy. It was 1:30am when I finished writing, and I’m kinda dumb at that time.


	7. Day 7: “I’ve got you”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Murdoc

It was laughable that dear Angus hadn’t moved yet. Murdoc had snatched him out of his house before, and he knew he wasn’t the only enemy Angus had — though he flattered himself to think he was the most important. Most concerning. Most feared.

Of course, Murdoc knew why Angus hadn’t left, despite the obvious danger. He was sentimental. He wouldn’t leave his grandfather's house.

And, you know, from a financial standpoint, that was a good move. Any millennial worth his salt would hang on to a paid-off house, even if he had a steady job with excellent hazard pay. But from a tactical standpoint…  _ tsk, tsk, tsk _ . Really, Dalton should’ve stepped in, forced MacGyver to move. A pesky alarm would only deter someone as determined as Murdoc for so long.

Most of the time, Murdoc was content to just sit back and watch. He had a few cameras placed so he could see the places Angus spent the most time. His firepit with his beloved team. His garage, nimble fingers tinkering with his latest project. His bedroom.

Having a constantly-running video feed on MacGyver’s bedroom was immensely entertaining to Murdoc. He would’ve thought a handsome, charming young man like Angus would have... company... more often. But dear MacGyver actually spent the majority of his nights alone. Well, not counting Murdoc’s monitors, and the many evenings where he sat around the firepit and drank with Dalton, Wilt and Riley. Never too much alcohol — Murdoc had never seen MacGyver drink more than two beers, and was very curious to see what the young man would be like, drunk. Was it very different from when he was drugged? A delicious query, perhaps for another time.

Tonight had been a fire night. And Murdoc, having recently finished a highly entertaining and lucrative job “taking care of” an enemy of an affluent drug cartel, had nothing better to do than to watch this lovely Tuesday evening play out. 

Angus really was terrible at charades.

Finally, the clock had struck, and all of MacGyver’s company left. Dalton to his lonely apartment, Riley to hers, and Wilt to his. Murdoc had been somewhat sad when MacGyver’s roommate had moved out: an almost-empty house provided no challenge, no thrill. And he wouldn’t mind another chance to shoot at dear Bozer.  _ Oh well _ .

Alone in his house, Angus rattled around for a bit — putting away dishes, tidying up the living room — before heading to bed. Murdoc had moved to his vantage point outside MacGyver‘s window.

Usually, Murdoc watched Angus’ activities from the comfort of his own place. Not that he spent a lot of time there. But sometimes, the extra challenge of an in-person viewing seemed worthwhile. Tonight was one of those nights.

And really, Angus made it so easy. The boy didn’t even have curtains! Murdoc had seen everything he could have ever wanted to. Not only his dashing nemesis in all stages of undress, but also in all forms of sleep. He had seen MacGyver sprawled across his bed in nothing but his boxer briefs, one ridiculously hot summer night. He had seen MacGyver bundled up against a cold, shivering in his blankets.

But his favourites, oh his absolute favourites, were the nightmares. Twitching, murmuring, trembling, sweating, gasping. Calling out for Dalton, for his mother. Names that Murdoc didn’t recognize, but were probably old army friends. Sometimes, it would be a very bad nightmare indeed. MacGyver would thrash about, screaming in his sleep, unable to wake himself. He would cry out, beg and plead a nameless fear to stop, not to hurt him anymore.

Once, not too long after the whole sewer-rocket launcher fiasco, Murdoc had been ecstatic to hear his name — well, his alias — on those lovely lips. That had been a bad night for Angus. He had screamed and begged Murdoc to let him go. 

Murdoc had saved that video recording. It was nothing short of delicious.

But tonight looked peaceful enough. MacGyver settled into bed, and was asleep after a few minutes. Sprawled in a way that didn’t look comfortable at all to Murdoc, but definitely sleeping, if the soft snores were any indication.

Unfortunately for MacGyver, Murdoc had no intention of letting this night continue to be peaceful.

Disabling the alarm was simple. Laughably simple.  _ It’s like he wants to be caught again _ . Murdoc had to resist the urge to whistle as he made his stealthy way through the dark and quiet house.

The bedroom door creaked slightly. Angus shuffled in his sleep, but showed no sign of waking. At least, not to an untrained eye. But Murdoc was highly trained in espionage, and he had the added advantage of having seen MacGyver asleep often. He could tell that he was faking, waiting to spring.

_ Fine, then _ . Murdoc sprang first, leaping onto the bed like a black cat. The resulting brawl was short, but very fun. MacGyver actually got a few good hits on Murdoc, but the inevitable ending was Murdoc's elbow clamped around MacGyver’s throat.

“I’ve got you now, MacGyver,” he murmured into the blond hair by MacGyver’s ear. “We’re going to have so much fun this time around.”

As MacGyver swallowed, struggling to breathe around the chokehold, Murdoc unholstered his gun. Not to shoot, oh no. Just a bit of added force. He clubbed MacGyver over the head with the metal glock, and released his chokehold. Angus crumpled to the bed, spots of blood staining the grey sheets.

“Well,” Murdoc chuckled as he prodded MacGyver’s motionless body, “I’ll have fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might continue this later this month ;)


	8. Day 8: Where did everybody go?

Of all the ops Mac and Jack had ever done together, the kind Jack hated the most were the “we get ourselves captured” type. Well, that and the Cairo type. Now, if it was just Jack needing to be taken, he could deal with that. He trusted Mac to get him out and save the day, and in the meantime, he could hold his own. His time in the CIA, Delta Force and army — not to mention his years in DXS and then Phoenix — had trained him well and given him a high pain threshold. 

He could also deal with it just being Mac who was taken. It sucked, and it tore him up inside every time, but oftentimes, Mac didn’t even need Jack to rescue him. He was as skilled an agent as they came, and Jack knew Mac could also hold up to interrogation. It just sucked when it happened. Especially when it happened by accident, without a plan to bust him out. Those were the days when Jack was willing to move heaven and earth to get his kid back.

But being taken together, needing to rely on either Mac’s brain or outside help to get them free, was not Jack’s idea of a good time.

Now, usually, their captor was stupid enough to put them in the same room. Then, with Mac’s brain going a mile a minute, and Jack to offer distraction and a sounding board, they invariably found their way home.

This time, their captor — a cartel leader in Venezuela — was smarter. Mac and Jack were in separate rooms, too far away to talk. 

Close enough to hear screams.

Jack tried to keep a lid on his own expressions of pain when the same three guys came in every time to knock him around. If he yelled, he yelled insults on the guards’ parentage and torture techniques, or song lyrics. He tried his hardest not to give Mac anything to worry about, because Jack knew Mac must be going through the same beatings, the same waterboardings, all in hopes of getting the pair of them to give the reason they had been caught infiltrating a cartel.

Mac was a lot better at keeping quiet and powering through pain, Jack knew from unfortunate experience. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not that he hadn’t yet heard any sound from Mac.

But hearing sound — even sounds of pain — could tell Jack that Mac was alive, in the same building, still with him. The silence was definitely worse, he decided. He wondered if Mac felt the same. He wondered if he should be a bit louder, for Mac’s sake. 

_ This is messed up _ .

They had gone in willingly, knowing they would be captured. It was part of the plan. Mac had uploaded a virus to the cartel’s darkweb online presence, and it would take a long time to upload. Time during which the leader, Luis Rojas, needed to be distracted. What better distraction than two hostages to interrogate?

Jack could think of a lot of better distractions, but he supposed that this plan  _ was _ working. Rojas had shown no indication that their virus had been discovered, and was still asking why they had infiltrated and how much they knew.

Jack still wished that he and Mac were together. Or at the very least, in adjoining rooms so they could still talk to each other. Mac tended to retreat into his head when he was interrogated. It was a pretty effective method, but if Mac spent too much time alone with only his noggin for company, he could get lost; spiral down into some dark thoughts. Mac’s brain was his greatest asset and somehow still his worst enemy. It was Jack’s job to ground him, help him quiet the ever-present buzz of thoughts going faster than light—

_ Light _ ? The light over Jack’s head flickered.  _ Aw, great, we gonna have me sitting in the dark, too _ ? But it was only momentary. The light came back on, and Jack ignored it. Until it happened again, and Jack thought he heard a muffled yell.

Now, Jack was no Mac, but even he knew the power drain on the lights meant electricity was being used somewhere else. Probably in pretty large quantities, if the amount of dimming was any indicator. And Jack felt his blood begin to heat up, knowing that electrical burns hurt almost the worst of any kind, and he knew Mac hated burns because they hurt for so long even after they had been attended to.

Jack hoped and prayed he was wrong, but the next time the light dimmed, Jack could hear Mac’s scream plainly.

Jack slammed his eyes shut and grit his teeth. He needed to be there with Mac. He wouldn’t be a whole lot of help, but he would be there for him. Jack could practically see him: back arching up, eyes rolling in his head, convulsing with the flow of electricity through his body.

Jack didn’t want to see Mac like that, not ever, but he needed to be there. Needed to be there to hold Mac when it was over, calm the shaking breaths and hold trembling hands.

There was nothing Jack could do from this room, but he couldn’t get out. And not just because of the broken arm — the door was heavy steel, bolted into the wall, and could only open from the outside. And if Mac hadn’t escaped his room by now, he couldn’t either. They were forced to rely on rescue. Yet another reason why Jack hated plans like this one.

Mac screamed again, accompanying another drain of electricity. He sounded like he was in pain, of course, but he also sounded  _ scared _ , to Jack. Probably with good reason. Mac knew more about electricity, the human body, and the effects of electricity on the human body, than most people. And he often delighted in sharing that knowledge with Jack.

People thought Jack was the talker, between the two of them. Clearly they’d never sat in a long-ass stakeout with a bored Mac. Jack knew more than he wanted to know about all sorts of things, and Mac’s current situation called to mind a “lecture” from Croatia a few months ago.

Electrocution could cause muscle spasms that could tear tendons and tissue from the intensity. It could burn organs and skin. It could permanently affect the nervous system, or even cause cardiac arrest.

Thinking about even just one of these outcomes had Jack praying for rescue to come quickly. To save his boy because he couldn’t — he was stuck in this damn room. The virus should have uploaded by now, Phoenix knew where they were. They had to come for them, they had to end this.

As Mac’s screams died down, Jack ran his shaking hands over his growing stubble, desperate to be checking Mac over, making sure he was alright. 

But he couldn’t. Mac was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might continue this later this month, maybe from Mac’s perspective


	9. Day 9: Greater good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac prioritises saving a building over his own life. Jack is pissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot of dialogue in this one, which I try not to do. Sorry :)  
> Oh, and lots of manly tears

Mac has seen all kinds of bombs in his life. Crudely-made, well-made, and everything in between. He’s seen bombs both hidden and obvious, bombs inside buildings, outside of them. Some of the worst bombs he’s ever come across were the ones strapped to terrified civilians. Fortunately, he had been able to save all of those people he had come across.

Mac rarely met a bomb he couldn’t defuse, and when he couldn’t defuse them, he minimised casualties — both living and structural — as best he could. 

There were no civilians left in the hospital. Matty had ordered a complete evacuation, and the hospital staff had complied quickly and efficiently, getting everyone to safety. That just left Mac, Jack and the rest of their TAC team. Riley was monitoring them with Matty from the War Room. 

This bomb… it was in the ground floor of the four-story hospital, laid so that if it went off, it would effectively bulldoze the whole building. Mac needed to defuse it, or every patient would be stuck in limbo between the care they needed and the emergency services loaned from the hospital in the next town. Lives were at stake, even if they weren’t in danger of blowing up. Like Mac was.

Because this bomb, it was complex. The guy who’d built it had really known what he was doing. Mac was nearing his wits’ end. And the countdown timer’s. He had two minutes, forty seconds left, and his fingertips were bleeding from stripped wires. 

“Jack, I can’t defuse it. I’m gonna have to contain it.”

As Mac moved to barricade the bomb in, minimising the damage the explosion would cause, he heard Jack in his earpiece. “I’m coming to you. You’ve got two-thirty on that timer.”

“No!” Mac yelled, heaving a heavy table onto its side. “Jack I’m almost done, I have time to get away, just clear yourself and the TAC team, and any people you guys found.” They had been looking for any people who had missed or dismissed the evacuation call, getting them to safety.

Mac could hear Jack running. But Mac knew he was too far away to get to him, and get out safely. “Jack, you have to leave.”  
  
“I’m not leaving without you!”

“You’re not,” Mac insisted. “I have time to get clear, I just have to finish containing the blast. You don’t have time to come for me and get out too. I’m coming, I have time.” He silently begged Jack’s bull-headed stubbornness to listen to reason, for once. He silently convinced himself that what he was saying was true.

One minute, twenty seconds. 

Jack was quiet for almost a full two seconds, and then said “Alright, hoss, but you get that damn thing contained, and you get your ass out of there. TAC team, we’re moving out. Hustle.”

Mac released the breath he was holding, and continued piling furniture over the windows. Jack would be safe, and hopefully the damage to the hospital wouldn’t be too catastrophic. Now, Mac had fifty seconds to get clear. He ran.

He wasn’t fast enough. 

Behind him, he heard the sound that often haunted his nightmares: the sound of explosives detonating, plaster crumbling, fire crackling, metal creaking. The funny thing was, he liked most of those sounds fine, if they were separate. Combined like this, though, they meant failure. 

He was far enough away from the bomb that he wasn’t burned. But as he stumbled, the building collapsed around him. He coughed, lungs filling with plaster dust and ash, as he dodged falling ceiling tiles and support beams. It seemed like he had been running forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a moment. But one falling chunk of who-knows-what clipped Mac on the head, and he fell to his knees. Flaming building bits tumbled around him, over him, and as his vision blurred out, his last thought was of Jack. Mac had lied to him, and gotten himself killed for it. Jack was gonna be pissed. 

—————

Jack got his team out of the building. His watch told him that Mac only had about a minute left, but he heard Mac running now, which meant he was actually getting himself out. There had been times where Jack had had to drag his bomb-nerd away from an impending explosion and console him afterward, telling him there was nothing even he could have done. Not this time. This time, Mac was coming to him. Finally, the kid had listened to reason. He’d save the day, get to safety, and he and Jack would go drink a beer or tw—

The building exploded. Jack heard it both in person and over comms. He heard Mac curse, heard his pounding feet stagger, heard a sickening thunk and a soft gasp. The sound of a body crumpling to the floor — a sound that Jack had both heard and caused all too often. 

“Mac!” he screamed into his comm. There was no response. All he could hear out of the earpiece was falling debris. 

The building hadn’t fully collapsed yet, it was mostly still standing. But he knew that the part that had collapsed the most was the part of the building the bomb had been in. Where Mac had been. 

He tried to run to the burning rubble, but someone’s arms held him back.

“No, Dalton, the building isn’t stable! Any movement could trigger further collapse!”

Jack tried to wrench himself free. “I don’t care! That’s my kid in there, let me go! Mac!” There were too many hands on him, keeping him from reaching his best friend. 

“Jack!” Riley’s voice pierced the tempest of his thoughts. “You have to wait for the building to stop shaking. Once the tremors have finished, you can go to him. But until then, you risk dropping even more of the hospital on top of him.”

“Tremors…” Jack was feeling tremors, alright. In his hands, in his whole body, really. All he could picture was Mac, crushed and burned and bleeding. He could still hear Mac’s tiny gasp of pain as something struck him. Mac needed him. But Riley was right. Riley was always right. He had to wait, even if it tore his heart into shreds to leave his boy in pain for a second longer than he had to. 

Waiting was agony. It felt like an eternity, but finally, _finally_ , someone told him he could go in. 

Jack made a beeline for the south side of the building. That was where the bomb had been placed, and where the worst of the damage was. Everything was covered in ash and plaster dust. It hung thick in the air, and kicked up as Jack ran full-tilt through what was left of the hospital. 

He called out for Mac, and listened both to his surroundings and his comm link. Nothing. Mac must have been unconscious. Or… _No_. Jack refused to even entertain the thought. 

It took nearly twenty minutes of sifting through piles and piles of rubble, until Jack found a leather shoe. That shoe was followed by a filthy khaki pant leg, and Jack choked out Mac’s name with a sob as he uncovered him from the chunks of building and medical equipment that had buried him.

Mac was pale, and plaster dust stuck in a bleeding head wound, leaving his hair and the left side of his face all tacky. He didn’t stir at all as Jack freed him and checked him over for injury. A broken arm, the obvious head wound, and more bruises than Jack thought he had ever seen on Mac all at one time (which was saying something, considering their line of work).

“Hey, Mac, come on buddy, wake up,” Jack said, his words coming out more like a strangled gasp than anything. If Mac had been conscious, he might not even have understood. Jack tabbed Mac’s pulse at his neck, desperately relieved to find it there. “Hang in there, Mac, some guys are coming in with a stretcher for you. It’s ironic, ain’it, that you have to get medevac to take you away from this hospital, huh?” Jack knew he was mildly hysterical. He forced out a laugh at his own words, but it came out more like a sob. 

—————

Mac indeed had a broken arm, a substantial head wound leaving him with a moderate concussion, and a little bit of internal bleeding from being crushed. All of those things were quickly set right at Pheonix Medical. 

Mac hadn’t woken up once. 

Jack wanted him to. He needed to see Mac’s eyes. To hear his voice in some form other than that of a nightmare. Needed to know that Mac would pull through. 

And only after that, after he knew beyond a doubt that Mac would be okay, would Jack unleash the storm that was brewing in his head and his heart.

He didn’t have to wait too much longer. Mac slowly blinked awake, wincing at the brightness of the lights. He stirred just a little, fingers clenching and unclenching on his uninjured side. He swallowed, which looked painful. “Jack?”

Jack scootched his chair closer to the bed, and took Mac’s hand in his own. “Hey, man. You awake?”

Mac grumbled. “Think so. My head ‘urts…”

Jack chuckled dryly. “I reckon it does. That’s what happens when you get a _building dropped on you_.” His relief at seeing Mac responsive hadn’t gone away; it only fed the haranguing Mac was going to get.

“Mac, you’re gonna listen to me. I don’t want to hear a single word out of your mouth, I want you to listen. Ya hear?”

Mac made a noncommittal grunt, probably because it hurt less than nodding or trying to talk.

“You said you had time to get out. You said “leave me, Jack, I’ll be okay.” And what happens? Mac, you could’ve died. Half that hospital was on top of you. That building was going to blow no matter how long you stayed in there to try and contain it. So why, for the love of all that is holy, why did you stay? No, don’t answer me,” Jack cut Mac off before he could say anything. “I am so far from done. You endangered your life needlessly. You all but threw your life away, and why? To save half a building.” 

Jack jabbed Mac in the chest with his finger for emphasis. “A building. Isn’t worth. Your. Life. You get that in your head, you get it in good. Your life is worth more than all the buildings in this city, in the whole damn world, Mac.” 

Jack knew there were tears on his face. He didn’t care. At least Mac had the decency to look guilty. “God, kid, you could have died. I heard you fall over comms, I thought…” He steeled his voice. “This isn’t going to happen again. No more of this “greater good” bullshit. You’re not going to risk your scrawny ass over a worthless hunk of brick and wood. If the building’s going to blow, then we get everyone out — _every_ one — and let it blow. I don’t care if it’s a hospital, or city hall. You get to safety.”

Mac had tears shining in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jack. I thought I had enough time. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

Jack huffed a laugh through his own tears. “When will you learn that you’re important too, you dumbass?” He gripped Mac in a fierce hug, mindful of the broken arm. “There’s no good great enough for you to blow yourself up for.”

Mac chuckled softly, and Jack could tell without looking that Mac had let those few tears fall. He knew Jack wasn’t going to stay mad at him; he never could for long.


	10. Day 10: "He looks so pretty when he bleeds"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's late, I'm sorry. Got behind doing schoolwork. Hopefully tomorrow I'll post two to make up for it.
> 
> This is the continuation of Day 7, in which Murdoc kidnapped Mac. This is Murdoc torturing Mac. This is kinda dark. You've been warned :)

As slight as Angus was built, he was no light burden for Murdoc to carry. Perhaps it was those long legs, or the well-defined muscles that years in government service had given him. And if Murdoc thought that carrying Angus out of his house was difficult, stuffing him into the car was even harder. There would definitely be some bruises left blooming across pale skin.

The drive was quiet. No one was on the road, and Murdoc didn’t feel like trying to hold a one-sided conversation with the unconscious boy in the back seat. MacGyver showed no signs of waking, not anytime soon. Even when Murdoc braked a little more forcefully than necessary when they arrived at their destination, chuckling at how it tossed MacGyver’s limp body around like a rag doll in the car, he still didn’t even stir.

More carrying. “Angus, dear, you’re lucky I don’t drag you. I really ought to, it would save my poor back. But I just can’t bear the thought of letting go of you, until we get to where we’re going.” A well-lit room (the dimly-lit basement was a bit of a cliché, now), with whitewashed walls and a somewhat creaky wooden floor would be MacGyver’s new home. 

“And, down you go, sleepy little Angus.” Murdoc laid MacGyver down in an uncomfortable-looking hunched over position against one of the walls. Bolted into the wall were steel rings with manacled chains, and Murdoc used these to fasten MacGyver’s wrists. He wouldn’t be able to stand up, or move any farther than a few feet away from the wall, when he woke up.

_If he wakes up_ … That had been a nasty knock to the head Murdoc had given MacGyver, and all that jouncing around on the drive probably hadn’t helped anything. “Well, nothing for it but to wait.” He cradled MacGyver’s lolling head with one hand. “And I’ll be waiting, MacGyver. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

A sudden flash of inspiration hit him, and he pulled a phone from his pocket. Not his phone, Murdoc only used his own, personal phone to keep tabs on Cassian. And to keep a few choice, work-related pictures, usually having to do with MacGyver. For work, he had a myriad of phones (mostly stolen). This one, a lovely little samsung affair, he had recently taken while abandoned in a grocery cart, and quickly wiped. And modified some of the security measures. It would take even the lovely Ms. Davis a fair bit of time to track down.

He tilted MacGyver’s head back to rest against the wall, so the phone’s camera could see his face. “Now, smile, Angus! It’s for our dear friend Jack!”

—————

Jack woke up to his phone vibrating and lighting up on his nightstand. Most people would ignore it if their phone went off at — _the hell’s the time?_ — 2:24am. But most people weren’t covert operatives. Their world didn’t ever really stop, even for Jack’s beauty sleep. And besides, sometimes if Mac couldn’t sleep, he’d call Jack up. And Jack always picked up the phone for his boy, ever since Paris and Murdoc had happened.

Being willing to pick up his phone didn’t mean he had to be happy about the time. Jack grumbled as he rolled over and fumbled at his phone, and the lamp cord. One new message, one image attachment, both from an unknown number.

Jack’s stomach rolled. Unknown numbers sending Jack texts was usually work-related, and almost always bad. Blinking sleep away and sitting up, he opened the messages.

_Well if it isn’t Jack-be-nimble, Jack-be-quick. You really do need to keep a closer eye on our boy. Don’t worry, I’m taking excellent care of him._

Jack’s blood chilled at the message, because everything about it screamed “Murdoc.” He didn’t want to open up the picture. But he had to; sometimes hostage photos were valuable in determining the location of the kidnapper, and also he owed it to Mac to see what was happening.

Mac was chained, sitting against a wall with his arms just over his head. His face was slack and pale, and blood coated the side of his head. Jack spent a moment cursing out a blue streak, and then called Matty.

—————

Consciousness returned slowly to Mac. His head ached, and wherever he was was bright. He opened his eyes to slits, grimacing. A bare room. Where was he, and how did he get there? He remembered Jack and Riley and Bozer all chilling around his firepit, he remembered losing charades spectacularly, he remembered—

“Hello, MacGyver.”

_No_.

Murdoc walked into Mac’s field of vision, grinning. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, boy scout? I’ve missed you.”

“Can’t exactly say the same,” Mac grumbled, wishing his voice was a little steadier. Between the headache and the fear at knowing that he was once again in Murdoc’s clutches, he could probably be forgiven a little tremble in his voice. But he didn’t want to give Murdoc the satisfaction of knowing just how completely unnerved he was.

Murdoc chuckled, and the sound grated on Mac’s nerves and sent an involuntary shudder down his spine. “Sweet as ever, Angus.”

“What do you want?” Mac tried to put some venom into his words, testing the cuffs around his wrists.

“Oh, nothing much,” Murdoc hummed. 

Murdoc only ever wanted two things, when it came to Mac. Information on his son Cassian, or fulfilling his own demented pleasures by hurting Mac. “I don’t know where your son is. I don’t have clearance for that, it’s above my paygrade.” Which was true, Mac had no idea where Cassian was, only that he was living with a good foster family, with agents monitoring discreetly. 

But Murdoc didn’t even seem fazed by Mac’s admission. Which meant that Mac was likely to be spending an unpleasant evening. If it was still evening. He didn’t know. At least he wasn’t drugged this time.

Something red flashed in Murdoc’s black-gloved hand. Mac couldn’t quite see what it was. “Oh, I haven’t given up on my son, unlike some fathers.” Mac ignored the heavy implications of Murdoc’s words. “But I know you don’t know where he is. I need someone higher up the food chain for that. Don’t mistake me, MacGyver.” Murdoc’s dead eyes turned to hard steel. “I will find my son.”

Mac huffed. “Good luck with that.”

“This is — hold on, let me do some math here — this is the third time I have taken you out of your own house, Angus. _You_ , the Phoenix Foundation’s very own wunderkind. I like to think I’m at least competent enough at my job to locate and retrieve an eleven-year-old boy.

“No, right now, you’re not here to give me information. Or, as would be more likely, stubbornly hold out while I try some delicious methods of loosening your tongue. As much as I would love that, no, the reason I took you from your blissful slumber is quite simple: I was bored.”

“Bored?” Mac deadpanned. 

“Yup,” Murdoc grinned, popping the end of the word. “A ho-hum tuesday night, I was feeling lonely and wanted some company. Well,” he checked his phone. “Wednesday morning, now. Smile!” And without any other warning, he took a picture of Mac. 

The thought of Murdoc having pictures of him made Mac’s skin crawl. He had no way of knowing how many pictures Murdoc had taken of him while he was unconscious, and he didn’t like that at all. “What are you doing with that?” he growled.

“Oh, just updating our dear friend Jack,” Murdoc said absently while texting. “I’m sure he’s curious what you’ve been up to since he left you unprotected last night. And, send.” He looked up at Mac. “I have several very threatening messages from dear Dalton on here. He’s quite creative, you know. I’ve never even heard of some of the insults he’s used.”

Yup, that was Jack. Mac usually took the role of ‘creative’ in their partnership, but when it came to words, that was Jack’s domain. Jack could tell vivid stories, curse up a storm of perfectly-tailored insults, confuse the hell out of anybody, or soothe and snap people out of whatever they were going through. Goodness knows, he had done all of that and more for Mac. Though the cursing and insulting hadn’t been quite Jack’s fault: it had been in the army before they had become buddies, and Jack had been in a lot of pain at the time. Mac hadn’t held it against him for very long.

It was good for Mac to know that Jack knew what was going on. If he knew Jack, he’d be racing toward Phoenix the second he got a hint that something was wrong, and his team would track him down. They’d find him. They’d save him.

Murdoc continued fiddling with the object in his right hand, which drew Mac’s attention to it. It flashed red in the light. Noticing Mac’s interest, Murdoc grinned and flicked open the blade of a red Swiss Army Knife. Mac’s knife. _Murdoc must have taken it from my dresser_. He wasn’t happy about the idea of his knife in the hands of a psychopath.

“You know, I really like knives like these. So versatile. And you, MacGyver, I’ve seen you do wonders with just this tiny thing.” Murdoc closed the large blade, and opened up the phillips screwdriver in the back. “Ah, it’s the Hiker model! So handy. See, I do my homework.” And suddenly, before Mac could respond or even think, Murdoc lunged, ramming the point of the screwdriver just under his right collarbone. The force drove the pointed tip deep through his skin. Mac yelled out in shock and pain.

Murdoc practically giggled. Blood bubbled up around the screwdriver with every gasping breath, and Mac tried to compose himself quickly. “Oh, lovely, lovely. Now let me see, is it clockwise, or counterclockwise?” Mac bit his lip over another yell as Murdoc twisted the screwdriver first one way and then the other, causing blood to spurt out, coating the stainless steel impaling him. “Ah! I’ve got it, it’s righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, isn’t it!” And as Murdoc yanked the tool free, Mac couldn’t bite down on a whimper fast enough.

Murdoc laughed — a demented, awful sound — turning Mac’s knife over and over in his hand, looking at the blood dripping from it. Mac chose not to say anything, though he briefly thought that if it had been Jack stabbed by a screwdriver, “screw you” and “guess I’m really screwed now” would have been heard loud and clear. Just thinking of Jack almost brought a smile to Mac’s face, despite the pain. Jack knew that Murdoc had him. Jack would find him.

—————

In the War Room, Jack’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out with a growl, but went pale at the contents of Murdoc’s newest message.

“Put it onscreen, Jack,” Matty ordered. She had made short work of getting the whole team together and working on finding Mac. It was barely an hour since the first message.

The second image had been better than the first. Mac’s eyes were open, he didn’t look drugged or in too much pain. He looked confused, as if Murdoc had taken the picture by surprise, but otherwise fine. Murdoc had said “Well, looks like Sleeping Beauty’s finally awake. Took him long enough, I must’ve hit him harder than I thought. Oh well. Now the fun can start.”

Jack had sent a stream of violent responses, all of which ended with Murdoc very very dead. He got silence in response, until now. The image, blown up on the big screen, was unpleasant for all of them to see. Mac’s eyes were fiery both with pain and anger, and there was blood soaking into his shirt from his right shoulder. It wasn’t enough blood to be a bullet wound. It wasn’t until Riley gasped and pointed out the bloody knife on the floor beside Mac that he realised what had happened to Mac. 

The kid’s knife had the screwdriver open. _Shit_.

“Riley, you track that phone. I don’t care if you have to tear mine apart to get at it. Just…” Jack trailed off, fighting angry tears. He had been with Mac not hours before Murdoc took him. If he had stayed (like Mac had offered), Murdoc wouldn’t have taken him. Or at least, not alone.

“Just find him.”

—————

Murdoc cut Mac’s bloodstained shirt off with the small blade, not taking any care at all not to nick Mac’s skin. He was somewhat unhappy about Murdoc cutting up his shirt, but all things considered, Mac was just grateful he had gone to bed wearing sweatpants. Murdoc was leering enough at just his bare chest.

Blood continued to seep from the hole in his shoulder, and from the various slices Murdoc had given him getting the shirt off. Now, Murdoc took the knife in hand and opened the screwdriver back up, looking thoughtful. “You know, I’m sad that this model doesn’t have a corkscrew. That would be a lot of fun, don’t you think? Ah well. We must make do with what we have, mustn’t we, MacGyver?” Mac shuddered as he tried (and failed) not to imagine what “fun” Murdoc could have with a corkscrew. 

Murdoc was now pacing dangerously close to him. “But this awl thingy… it certainly looks entertaining. You know, it might even be sharp enough to put someone’s eye out.” He feinted towards Mac’s face, and cackled as Mac flinched away. “Oh, I won’t touch those dreamy eyes of yours, Angus. Not until I can see the life flicker out of them.” He brought the awl down, tracing the sharper reaming edge of it down his jawline and neck until he stopped just over the screwdriver hole. Mac’s breathing picked up as Murdoc ever-so-carefully pushed the tool into the wound.

“I’m sure you already know this, Boy Wonder, but this reamer is used to enlarge holes.” Murdoc’s sadistic grin twisted his face. “Holes like the one I just very recently made.”

Yes, Mac knew the function of a reamer, even though it was the feature on his knives he had used the least. And the function of his reamer hurt like hell under Murdoc’s intent gaze. Mac screwed up his face against the pain and tried so hard not to make a sound. He was determined not to give Murdoc any more satisfaction from this than he could help.

After he was done playing with the reamer, he pulled it out forcefully, and then jabbed the awl hard into Mac’s thigh. And took another damn picture, with the knife still in his body. 

After the awl was the small blade. Murdoc added to the scattered cuts over Mac’s chest, chattering creepily all the while. “It’s a pity I can’t get to your back without unchaining you, I’d love to see blood all over those broad shoulders of yours. I guess your ribs will have to do. Say, are you ticklish?” Murdoc ran the blunt edge of the blade up and down Mac’s ribs, face expectant. Mac didn’t respond. He actually wasn’t very ticklish, and it wouldn’t have tickled anyway, so he stared blankly at Murdoc.

“Oh, you’re no fun.” And he jabbed the blade up to the full 1.5 inches in between the ribs on his left side. 

—————

Another damn picture. Riley was getting closer to triangulating the position of the phone, of Murdoc, but she still needed more time. 

It seemed to Jack that Captain Crazy was systematically using every tool in Mac’s SAK to hurt him. There were now pictures of the screwdriver, the awl and the small knife blade. Jack was getting angrier, and scared. There probably wasn’t a whole lot that Murdoc could do with a can opener, but if anyone was creative enough to find something to do with one, it would of course be Murdoc. Not to mention the bigger blade. 

Mac wasn’t looking great in his pictures, either. His torso had several bleeding wounds in it, though most were shallow cuts. Murdoc hadn’t touched Mac’s face, so Jack could see perfectly just how scared and hurt and angry Mac was. It was written all over his face and in his eyes, even in his posture. It might have been difficult for someone who hadn’t worked with Mac as closely as Jack had, and for as long, but Jack definitely considered himself fluent in Angus MacGyver by now. 

He had tried calling the number Murdoc texted from, but all he got was a voicemail-answer that nearly made him throw his phone.

_Oh, Jack, did you really think I’d let you talk to him? Nope. Visual only, this time around. Though I do find myself wishing you could hear some of the gorgeous sounds he can make, with the proper encouragement. Ta ta!_

Riley was working as fast as she could, Jack knew, and he knew it would do no good to tell her to go faster. He didn’t want to yell at her. She didn’t deserve that. And Bozer’s pacing was driving him up the wall, but Jack couldn’t snap at him for being worried about his friend, and for feeling helpless. Jack felt the same way. Only Matty looked composed, and only just. And if they didn’t locate Mac soon, Jack was gonna just come unglued. He was impatient on a good day. This was one of the worst days he’d ever had.

—————

Mac hadn't thought that Murdoc would be able to find a way to hurt him with the bottle opener, but Murdoc was just as creative as Mac himself. He just had turned his talents to the illegal side. 

All while Murdoc hurt him, he talked. And talked and talked. Like a perverse mockery of Jack, maybe. Murdoc talked over Mac’s cries and gasps, told him about his wife, his son, his sister (whom Mac was sure Murdoc had made up on the spot). Murdoc talked about the tools on the knife, about tools he wished the knife had, and what he could do to Mac with things like a pair of scissors, or pliers, or a hook. And Mac was continually grateful for the simplicity of the Hiker model. There were only seven tools in it (not counting the toothpick and tweezers), and Murdoc had gone through four already. Mac was more than halfway through. He forced himself not to think about what could happen after Murdoc had run out of tools.

Mac didn’t like to think about it, but he had used the wood-saw on skin before. He had been using it for its intended purpose, when a BadGuy had snuck up on him, prompting Mac to fight with what he had in his hand. The serrated edge didn’t make a very neat cut at all. The man had yelled like mad. 

And Mac understood now. 

Murdoc dragged the wood-saw down his arm slowly, in jerks and starts that made Mac gasp and whimper. And then he began to actually saw into one of his fingers. 

“Did you know they’re making Swiss Army Cards now, Angus?” Murdoc’s tone was all nonchalance, as if he wasn’t causing Mac to cry out and struggle. “They really are. It’s like a credit card, but it’s got little knives and gizmos jammed into it. It’s probably a bit too thick to fit into a wallet—” Tears were streaming down Mac’s face and he screamed as he was sure Murdoc had hit the bone in his finger. Blood spattered down from his hand onto his body. Murdoc moved the saw experimentally against the bone once or twice, and Mac might have blacked out for a second or two.

He was startled back into his living nightmare by Murdoc yanking the saw blade out of the groove he’d carved.

Another picture. Mac tried to look as defiant as he could, but that was difficult with tears on his face and everything just hurt so badly. He had lost quite a bit of blood by now, and he hoped desperately that his team would come for him soon. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.

“Oh, darling Angus. Are those tears I see? How delicious. You know, you really are quite lovely like this. If only I had more time… but no. Business before pleasure, you know the drill.” Murdoc flicked out the three-inch blade, and this time, coming close to Mac’s face was no feint. Mac squeezed his eyes shut with a whimper, terrified that Murdoc would make good on his threat to take one out. And he felt the cold, sharp tip of the knife just over his tear duct, bite into the skin. Mac held his breath and steeled himself for literally blinding agony, but it didn’t come. Well, it still hurt, but it seemed like all Murdoc was doing was digging the blade around near the corner of his eye.

Murdoc took the knife away, presumably to admire his handiwork. The tears of pain and fear still falling from Mac’s closed eyes stung the cut, and sent diluted blood falling faster down his cheek.

“There, just look at yourself. A work of art, if I do say so myself. Crying blood. Oh, Dalton’s going to have a fit! Smile for him, Angus!”

Mac couldn’t bring himself to even open his eyes.

—————

They had found him. Riley had traced the phone to an abandoned house maybe twenty minutes away from Phoenix. They were in a van, all suited up for their rescue mission, when Jack’s phone went off again. He considered not even opening the message because they already knew where Mac was, but if something big had happened and Jack didn’t see, didn’t prepare for it, he would kick himself for it later. So he looked.

And he sobbed.

Mac’s head was bowed slightly. He was just absolutely covered in blood. The last picture, he had been crying, but now, it looked for all the world like Mac’s left eye was crying blood. Both eyes were closed tightly, so Jack had no way of knowing if it was damaged or not. But what really got him was how defeated Mac looked. How exhausted and spent. 

Another message came in, text only.

_Well, I see you’ve found me and are headed this way. I guess I’ll have to make myself scarce. I do enjoy this cat-and-mouse game you and I have going on, Jacky, it’s quite fun. Unfortunately, I can’t bring MacGyver with me. I have to travel light, and there’s simply no room in my suitcase for dead weight, no matter how pretty he looks while he’s bleeding. So this is goodbye, for now. Until next time._

_-Love, Murdoc_

Jack’s heart stilled at Murdoc’s choice of words. _Dead weight_. He had called Mac dead weight, did that mean… _God no. Please._

_PS:_

_You probably should try a bit harder to convince dear Angus to move. It’s getting a bit routine, breaking into his house time and time again. I’ll do what I must, of course, but I would prefer the challenge of a new location, if it’s all the same to you. Cheerio!_

_-M_

That did it. Jack threw his phone across the van, not caring when he heard the screen shatter, or that it made Bozer jump.

The twenty minutes, shortened slightly by some aggressive driving on Riley’s part (Jack would be proud of his girl later), dragged on, until finally the building was in sight.

“Alright, guys, Murdoc says he’s left, but you need to be on your guard anyway. Mac’s our priority, so once we find him, we’re out of here.”

Riley took his hand. “Let’s get him back then, Jack.” And she led the way into the building, pistol raised and loaded (Jack would be so far beyond proud of her later).

It only took a few minutes of searching to find Mac. The room was bright, which only made everything look worse. Mac’s whole body was covered in blood. His SAK stuck out of his calf at an awkward angle, and Mac’s head was slumped down onto his gore-stained chest.

Jack undid the cuffs, catching Mac as his body fell forward, no longer held up by the chains. There was _so_ much blood…

“Jack, he’s breathing,” he heard Matty reassure him. And he could see that Mac was indeed breathing. But that was the only thing that was right about all of this. The half of Mac’s face that wasn’t covered in blood was lined with pain, even while unconscious. And he was so pale. Probably because he was covered with and laying in at least a liter and a half of blood.

The EMTs that had followed them came in then, strapping Mac to a gurney and trying to ascertain the damage. In the ambulance ride, they hesitated over starting a blood transfusion before trying to close some of the wounds, and by the time they had decided it was best to wait until the wounds were closed to give him blood, they were already at Medical. Which was good, because Jack had been approximately three seconds from losing his mind.

They cleaned Mac up, they stitched his wounds, they drained a whole blood bag into him and started on a second one. The doctors said he would be fine. He would be walking on crutches for a while, which meant he would be out of field rotation for the duration of that, but Jack would take crutches over dead any day. 

And it was day, now. The sun had come up just around the second blood bag. And Jack still couldn’t shake the feeling that if he had stayed at Mac’s house that night, Mac could be sleeping in his own bed, instead of an uncomfortable hospital bed.

There was nothing he could do about the past except feel guilty. There was nothing he could do about the present while Mac was still unconscious. But the future… that was something he could do something about. He could hunt Murdoc down, that slippery son of a bitch, and kill him, so he could never hurt Mac again. So Mac could be safe in his own damn house, and sleep without nightmares. 

Jack hadn’t been there to stop Murdoc, not the first time and not this time either. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, but three times, oh no. The rhyme stopped there. There wasn’t going to be a third time.


	11. Day 11: Psych 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Probably not quite a psych trip like it was supposed to be, but the idea hit me and I just had so much fun writing it. It at least checks off "defiance and struggling"

Mac’s head slammed into the ground, and he saw stars. Well, technically, his brain sent out random electrical impulses because of the shock of impact, which his brain interpreted as flashing lights. But either way, it hurt, and he had to blink hard to get his vision to right itself. Not that he had a whole lot of recovery time between that and the steel-toed boot that rammed into his side, making him cough. 

The two men roughing him up were having way too much fun. Mac had fought back a little at first, but all that had earned him was a bloody nose and a kick between the legs that left him gagging. He’d never given a whole lot of thought to the idea of having kids, but jeez, he’d at least like to have the option, thank you very much.

The door opened, and the two goons stepped away after one parting kick. Mac coughed again, spitting blood onto the floor. A familiar hand touched his head, but instead of the gentle tough he was accustomed to, he was yanked up harshly by his hair. He gasped to keep up appearances — okay, yes, and it hurt — as his head was forced up to look into Jack’s brown eyes. Always so quick to crinkle in laughter, now they were harsh, and calculating. Jack had a role to play, and he was damn good at it.

“Well, wouldja lookee here,” Jack chuckled, emphasising the drawl so far past what was normal for his voice that it was almost comical. But it fit the location. The two of them were undercover in Texas, near the Rio Grande bordering Mexico, and Jack had spent a good few weeks perfecting his cover as a member of the dangerous gang they had been sent to infiltrate. “Looks like we got ourselves a scrawny white rat. Where you from, huh? Lemme guess… somethin’s telling me Cali.” Mac put on a glare.

Jack just laughed, making the beefy thugs flanking him chuckle stupidly. This gang spent more energy on brawn than brain, Mac could tell. “Aww, are you some Hollywood hipster, Goldie?” one of them cooed at him, reaching a hand out toward his face. Mac knew he shouldn’t have, but he growled and tried to jerk away.

Jack’s hand — no, Curtis Matthews’ hand — tightened in his hair. “You don’t wanna be doin’ that, sonny. You just stay right here, or I’ll let my dear friends Mo and Stanley have another whack at you, huh? Now I’m sure you don’t want any more blood on that pretty mug of your’n.” Mac went still. Their mission was simple: Jack infiltrates the gang to get insider info, Mac gets caught sneaking in, Jack releases him and the two of them hightail it out of there. Nothing they haven’t done a hundred times over. 

Mac kept still, but spat out some of the blood pooling at his lips onto Jack’s green cargo pants. Jack gave him a slap that sent him sprawling onto the ground, and Jack raised him up by his hair again, this time with a knife at his exposed throat.

“Oh, now you have jus’ made a big mistake, bucko. You see, the only reason you ain’t dead right now is because we need to know just how you slinked in here. And we’ll get it out of you, that’s a promise—”

Mac cut him off. “And I should trust the promise of a gang member? Don’t make me laugh.” The cold metal of the knife pressed harder against his throat, and Mac had to hiss as if in pain, in order to stifle a laugh. Jack was using the blunt edge of the knife to ‘threaten’ him.

“You watch it, Cali-boy, you just better watch yourself. It ain’t healthy to go pissin’ off the man who’s in charge of gettin’ information outta you.”

Mac was having too much fun. Sure, his ribs hurt like hell, and the blood still trickling from his nose was getting irritating, but he loved missions like this one, where he and Jack could just bicker shamelessly. The first time, he had been a bit apprehensive, unable to know just how far might be too far, and unsure if he might accidentally say something a little too wrong and push Jack away. But the two of them had accepted that sometimes ops required you to say and do things you don’t mean, and play a role that wasn’t nice.

And it wasn’t like Mac enjoyed letting those two ugly bastards wipe the floor with him. But he had to keep up appearances. If he had actually fought back, those two men would probably be unconscious still. Being an undercover operative — not to mention his time in the army — had given Mac significant physical combat skills. Better than those of your average thug, anyway. No, getting beat up was never fun. The fun part was getting to act like a petulant city kid, and watching Jack act like a macho gang thug. And the hideous fake beard they had put on Jack was just too much. It was difficult to look him in the face without blowing their covers.

Jack brought the knife away, hauling Mac to his feet with a rough grip on his shoulder. “Alright, boys, let’s take this Hollywood bastard to our interrogation room. See if I can’t get him to squawk. And remember, squirt, I’ve still got my knife. You try anythin’ funny, I’ll see if you make as good a pincushion as a punching bag.” The quirk of Jack’s lip told Mac that he was trying real hard not to laugh at his own wit. 

Mac squirmed in the hold of the goons — what had Jack called them? Mo and Stanley? — and Jack walked behind them. The room they threw him into could only have been described as grim. The walls were bare except for some iron rings that a person could be cuffed to. It was lit poorly by a single bulb. There was a drain in the floor: for blood, Mac supposed.  _ Interrogation room indeed _ .

Jack walked in, stepping over him. “Alrighty, boys, you’ve done jus’ grand, now I’ll take it from here. I’mma see if I can’t get this little punk to squeal.” The two looked oddly crestfallen.

“You sure you don’t need any backup?” one of them asked, playing with a knife of his own.

Jack’s glare turned dark. “You suggestin’ I can’t handle a skinny little California city-kid, Mo?” he said dangerously.

Mo’s eyes went wide. The wrath of Jack Dalton was feared for a reason (even when he was Curtis Matthews), and it seemed like this particular gang had learned it well. “Not at all, man, I know you can handle the twerp.”

Mac pushed himself onto his elbows, trying to edge away, but Jack noticed and pinned him down with a heavy boot on his back. “Damn right I can handle him.” Jack’s knife landed point-down in the wood floor, centimeters from Mac’s face. And that was Mac’s cue. He grabbed the knife, Jack lifted his foot, and the two agents rounded on the dumbfounded gang members. “I’ve been handling this kid for years.” In under forty seconds, both men were down for the count, and Mac and Jack were laughing as they ran out of the shitty building that La Hoja gang called headquarters.

“Whoo, hoss I ain’t had that much fun on an op in a long time!” Jack ripped off the terrible fake beard as they ran.

“Yeah,” Mac agreed, swiping at the blood on his face, “but did you have to slap me so hard?”

Jack looked offended. “You spat blood onto my new green pants, man! That was totally uncalled for, you know I love these pants!”

They continued jabbing at each other as they ran toward their getaway car. Mac’s bruises would heal, and now he and Jack had yet another mission they could say went off without a hitch.


	12. Day 12: I think I've broken something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Broken promises, broken trussssst
> 
> This is a semi-continuation of day 6, "Please," wherein Mac was sad that Jack was leaving. It also has in it the ending for 7 and 10 (my Murdoc arc).
> 
> This could be MacRiley if you really wanted it to be, but I didn't write it to be.

When Riley was about nine years old, her father left. Divorce wasn’t a foreign concept to her, a lot of her school-friends had divorced parents, and step-parents. 

She knew that her dad had been nothing special. He drank too much, and hit her mom around. He’d only hit Riley once, and her mom had gotten so angry. Riley had never seen her so angry before, even that time when Riley was six and broke Grandma’s china plate by accident. Angry at her dad, though, that was what was different. Elwood never hit Riley after that, but it didn’t stop him from hurting her mom. 

And then he left. She wasn’t sure how to feel. Her dad was gone, it was just her and her mom in the house, and both of them seemed kind of at a loss for what to do with themselves.

Riley wasn’t sure she wanted a step-dad, so when her mom started dating a few guys, Riley was cold, aloof, and sometimes even downright mean. None of them lasted very long, for various reasons. Joey drank, Mark cheated, et cetera. She was proud to say that she had scared some away. It wasn’t like it mattered: they weren’t ever going to be a dad to her. They weren’t even interested in her, didn’t try to get to know her. 

Until she was twelve, and her mom told her she was going on a date, after a few months’ stretch of nobody. The date seemed to have gone well — her mom was happy, at any rate. One date turned into two, and three, and then her mom brought Jack to their apartment to meet Riley.

Riley turned on her “scare away the boyfriend” attitude, even though her mom had asked her to go easy on Jack. It seemed like she really liked him. 

_ “Mom, they only care about you, what does it matter how I act?” _

_ “That’s been true for a few of the guys I’ve dated, honey, but some of them really did try to talk to you, and you pushed them away.” _

_ Riley plonked down onto her mom’s bed. “Who, like Mark? He sure seemed invested in his relationship with the two of us. And with his other girlfriend.” _

_ “I’m not excusing what he did, Riley, I’m saying that you were deliberately unkind even before you knew there was reason to be. You don’t give anyone a chance to get to know you, you push them away first.” She sighed, putting down her hairbrush. “Look. Jack will be here in a few minutes. I want you to at least be civil. I know I don’t have a great track record. But Jack… everything about him says he’s a good guy. Just give him a chance, please?” _

She didn’t know exactly what she was expecting. She didn’t know what a 36-year-old bathroom-tile salesman named Jack Dalton was supposed to look like. What she got was a guy who looked like he had gotten off of a motorcycle. He wore a blue Bon Jovi t-shirt under a black leather jacket, and yellow aviators. Which were the dumbest things Riley had ever seen. 

He seemed like a nice enough guy, if Riley were being honest. He kissed her mom on the cheek, and smiled at Riley. Dinner was nice. He tried to start up a conversation, but Riley ignored him.

After initially rebuffing him, she expected Jack to stop trying, like all the rest. But he never did. He constantly was asking for her opinions, showing her things he thought she’d like, taking her places and asking her what she was doing with her computer (which was only semi-legal, but he didn’t have to know). It seemed like Jack really did care; not just about her mom, but about Riley too.

After maybe a few months of dating, Jack moved in. Riley was used to tiptoeing through the house when there was a man present, always on her guard. But Jack almost never drank. When he did, it was only a glass of wine with her mom at dinner, or maybe one beer. He never showed any signs of violence, and her mom never once seemed apprehensive around him.

It took a long time, but Riley loosened up. She and Jack did all kinds of things. They went to arcades, the movies, ballgames. He taught her how to drive (the reason she had such a lead foot, even as an adult. She learned later that Jack had taught her several evasive driving tricks). For the first time that Riley could remember, she actually had a dad. A real dad, not some deadbeat drunk. He helped her with her biology homework (and Riley never really thought to question why a bathroom-tile salesman knew so much about the bones in the hand or the way blood clots). He watched her walk across the stage at her high school graduation, and they celebrated together.

And then he left. And this time, Riley knew exactly how to feel. She was hurt. She knew Elwood had been back in their apartment: she had smelled beer and cheap cologne. She had spent her childhood dreading that smell. She knew he had hit her mom: she could fool the rest of the world with makeup, but not Riley. Elwood had booked it out of their apartment, and he never came back, but neither did Jack. 

She knew his number, she could have called. But she was angry. She stayed angry until it burned her out, and then she was just numb and hurt and sad. She tried not to think about Jack for years, but she couldn’t get into her mom’s car without hearing Jack’s patient drawl guiding her through the motions of the gearshift. She couldn’t drive past the Angel Stadium without remembering the games they had gone to. 

In prison, there were no reminders of Jack except her own thoughts. He would be disappointed.  _ Well, let him be. He doesn’t have the right to tell me what to do anymore. I saved my mom. He broke her heart. _ She tried to block thoughts of him out, until the day she got a visitor request from an Angus MacGyver. And Jack Dalton. She thought about refusing, as all her anger and hurt welled up in her. But she had always been a curious person, and prison hadn’t changed that. The worst that could happen was she finally got to tell him how betrayed she was, and she would go back to her cell. And this MacGyver fellow would just have to deal with that.

That wasn’t how the meeting had gone at all. She was thrown head-first into a whirlwind, and Jack was suddenly right by her side again. He didn’t try to pretend that everything was good between them, like he had never left, but he tried to reach out again, make amends. 

And just like before, she had let him, because he had been the only one of her mom’s dates to try. And because she had missed him so much. She let him back into her life again, because now that he didn’t have to lie anymore, he promised he would stay.

And just like before, he left.

She tried not to be too angry. She knew the reason this time, and he did actually say goodbye, instead of vanishing. But he had promised. “Jack Dalton don’t go back on his promises, Ri, not if he can help it,” he had said to her once. He must not have been able to help it this time.

But that didn’t make it hurt any less. 

And now here she was, wrapped in one of Jack’s old leather jackets, crying quietly in her room in Mac’s house. 

—————

_ Mac’s vision was blurring on the edges. Blood loss will do that to a person. Murdoc’s laughter echoed dizzyingly around in his head. Everything hurt. His hand, his shoulder, his leg. His whole body was tacky with his blood. He couldn’t see through tears. _

_ Murdoc was laughing, chanting “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick… oh, there’s no good way to rhyme with that. Well either way, you should be counting your lucky stars, Angus.” _

_ Mac was in a daze, and none of Murdoc’s words really cut through it. Maybe it was the singsong tone that made it difficult to latch onto any word but “Jack.” _

Jack? Is Jack coming?

_ Mac’s own knife drove into his calf, and agony blinded him. He might have screamed. He might still be screaming. He could hear Murdoc’s demented laughter ringing in his ears. _

He sat bolt upright. A few shuddering breaths later, he realised that he was not, in fact, with Murdoc, but in his own bed. It had been months since he had woken up in a hospital bed with his leg immobilised, his finger taped up and still on a blood transfusion. Months since he had woken up in a panic, feeling the IV and thinking he was still with Murdoc, still being tortured for no reason other than the sick assassin got off on it.

Jack had been there. Jack had held his uninjured hand and talked him back down to reality. Told him he was safe,  _ it’ll be alright, hoss, Jack’s gotcha.  _ Jack had promised, over and over again throughout their years of friendship, that he wouldn’t leave. But it was a month into the Kovacs mission, and Jack was gone.

Mac had just gotten his dad back, and was trying to make amends. It was difficult to make up for years of abandonment-issues and low self-esteem, but Mac had been determined to give his dad a second chance. Because Jack had always,  _ always _ told him that he would regret it if he never tried. 

But what Mac regretted the most right now was letting his guard down. His dad had drilled into him, first by rote and then by example, that you can’t trust other people, that they only care when you’re convenient, that they’ll leave once you’re no longer of use to them. James had left, leaving Mac more damaged that he would ever admit out loud. But it had seemed like he hadn’t ever needed to admit it to Jack. Jack always just seemed to understand, to  _ know _ , and he told Mac he would stay. He promised, over and over, that he wouldn’t leave, that he would have Mac’s back forever. And while Mac knew that nothing really could last forever, he had really wanted to believe him.

Mac was confused out of his thoughts by a quiet sniffle. It sounded like it came from Riley’s room. He guessed it had to have come from Riley’s room, really, because she was the only other person living in his house, and it was unlikely an intruder would be sniffling.

He got up quietly, pulling on a shirt and shuffling down the hall to Riley’s room. He tapped softly at the door before opening it. 

“Riles? Are you okay?”

She turned away from the door as it opened, and Mac saw that she was wearing one of Jack’s favourite black leather jackets. Her shoulders shook slightly. Mac went over to sit in the bed next to her. “Hey,” he murmured, hesitantly reaching a hand out to put on her shoulder. The second he touched her, she seemed to dissolve, and latched onto him.

Mac was caught off-guard, but it wasn’t like he had never hugged Riley before. He held her as she cried softly, rubbing a hand up and down her back. 

“I’m sorry, sorry, Mac, I…” she gasped as she tried to regain some control over her breathing. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me,” he assured her, breaking out of the hug and holding her by the shoulders so he could look at her. She must have already taken off her makeup, because there wasn’t any smudged on her face despite her tears. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her lip quivered. “Are you…”  _ Obviously she’s not okay, dumbass. _ He changed tactics. “Can I help?”

Riley chuckled wetly. “No, Mac, not unless you can bring him back to us.”

_ Ah, now the jacket makes sense. _ Riley must have been missing Jack just as much as he was tonight. He sighed, running a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. “I wish I could, Riles. I wish I could turn back time. There are lots of reasons for that, actually, but this… this is a big one. I wish I could have gone with him, or convinced him not to take the mission.” Mac had known Jack was going on a mission; his dad had told him that Jack would be leaving to take charge of a very important, top-secret op. The best-of-the-best kind of mission, and Jack was going to lead it. Mac had been so torn between being proud and being sick.

“He promised,” Riley whispered. “He had always promised he wouldn’t leave. When I was a kid, he was always there for me, even when I didn’t want him to be. And he left. Twice.” She leaned back against the headboard, and Mac did the same, hand in hand. “I miss him, Mac.”

“Me too.” 

It had taken a while for Mac and Riley to reach a point where they shared everything with each other, but there weren’t really any secrets between them. Mac knew he could be vulnerable in front of her, and he was always open for her to be vulnerable in front of. 

“He told me once he’d never go back on a promise if he could help it. So there must be a reason.”

Tears stung at Mac’s eyes, but he blinked them away and cleared his throat. “I talked to him before he left. About a week before. He said he didn’t want to go, and wished he didn’t have to. He didn’t want to leave you, Riley.”

She smiled softly at him. “Well that means he didn’t want to leave you either, genius.”

Mac smiled back, but couldn’t stop the thoughts rising unbidden in his brain. His dad’s words: “you can’t trust anyone, Angus, because people only care when something’s convenient. Once it’s more trouble than it’s worth, they leave.” Those words had haunted him as a young child, because his dad had left him. Had little Angus been more trouble than he had been worth? He had tried to please his dad, tried to prove that he was worth something, but it must not have been enough. And now, Jack had left, and while he said he hadn’t wanted to go, he didn’t seem to fight his assignment at all. 

“Mac, I can hear you thinking.”

“That’s physically impossible.”

Riley moved her thumb gently over the back of his hand. “Alright, I didn’t hear anything. But you’ve got your “I’m thinking” face on, and it’s kinda mixed with your “worried about your dad” face.”

Mac laughed, surprised. “I have a “worried about my dad” face?”

“Yeah. We’ve seen it a lot recently.”

Mac sighed. “I’m not worried about my dad. I was just thinking about the past. My dad left and I didn’t know why. I thought it was because I did something wrong, or wasn’t good enough. He says that isn’t true now, but... I spent a long time thinking it was. Thinking that everyone was going to leave if I messed up. And I can’t help but think that if Jack had really wanted to stay, he would have fought harder.”

There, he said it. The thought was traitorous, the idea that Jack would want to leave either of them, especially after he had promised to stay and said he didn’t want to go. 

“Maybe… maybe we just don’t know the whole story. You know Jack even better than I do. Even if he had to go back on his word, you said he told you he didn’t want to go. He wouldn’t lie, not even to make you feel better. He’s coming back, and we can get all our answers then. He’s coming back.” Riley sounded like she was trying to reassure herself just as much as Mac. 

The pair of them spent a good hour or so talking about Jack. Remembering stupid things he had done or wore or said. Remembering badass moments and movie nights, and days off at the beach. And when they woke up in the morning, they weren’t really surprised to find that they had fallen asleep nestled together.    
  


—————

Jack had been gone a grand total of 215 days. He had counted every day away from his kids, every moment. Matty had kept him updated on the downlow, she told him every time they had gotten hurt on a mission — and he had wanted to come home every time, but heaven help him, he couldn’t. But now, finally, after seven months, he was coming home. 

And he thought he knew exactly what would be waiting for him. He knew very well the promises he had made to those kids. Both of them had been abandoned and hurt very early in their lives, and Jack had tried his best to always be a solid fixture, something they could cling to. But he had gone and abandoned them too. He couldn’t even tell them why, couldn’t tell them the truth. Not because he didn’t want to, but because it was classified. Because James MacGyver would have his head.

So he expected Mac and Riley to be hurt, angry. Maybe yell. He would take it. He deserved it. And whatever they wanted, he would respect. If they didn’t need him, and didn’t want him back in their lives after what he’d done, he would be devastated, but he loved them too much to say no.

Jack stepped off the plane, and was greeted by the whole team. Matty, Riley, Bozer, Desi, and Mac. James MacGyver stood in the doorway to the terminal, watching. Jack had a sudden, semi-rational desire to punch him.

Jack hesitantly approached his family. He tried to smile, but felt like crying. “I toldja I’d come back.”

He saw Mac’s lip quirk up in what he knew was Mac trying not to laugh or cry, or both. He walked up to Jack, and now Jack could clearly see the tears threatening to fall from Mac’s eyes. “You’re… you’re really back, man.” And Mac smiled. A sight for some of the sorest eyes in the world.

Jack swallowed. “I’m back. And listen, Mac, I’m sorry. You too, Ri,” he said, looking to the girl who was his daughter in every way but blood. “I never wanted to go, and came back soon’s I coul—oomph!”

His breath was stolen in a rib-cracking hug from Mac. One that Jack reciprocated rapidly, with unashamed tears running down his face. Riley marched up and claimed her own part of their hug. He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, and he didn’t care. He had a lot of lost time to make up for, and he didn’t care how long it took to do it. He knew that trust took longer to mend than bones. He would fix what he had done to them by leaving. 

  
_ And you know what? Orders be damned _ , Jack thought as he saw James leave the room.  _ They deserve the truth.  _ Jack was never leaving these kids again, no matter what mission on whose orders, no matter who threatened him. Mac and Riley needed him, and he needed them just as much. 


	13. Day 13: Breathe in, breathe out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tag to 1x07  
> My take on how Jack finds Mac after being nitrogen-boarded

Mac had been drowned a few times. It came with the territory of being a covert operative, just like the various burns and scrapes and the occasional GSW. And while burns were Mac’s least favourite type of injury to have, he had to admit that waterboarding was his least favourite kind of torture. 

Of course, he’d rather not be tortured at all. But again, it came with the territory. 

Drowning was a terrible feeling. He was completely out of control as his body fought for air. He couldn’t tamp a lid down on his panic. And El Noche was right. Breathing in nitrogen did feel an awful lot like drowning.

Mac knew he wasn’t breathing in any liquid. His body felt like it should be able to breathe, but he couldn’t. And it  _ hurt. _ He thought he sounded like Darth Vader with pneumonia when he tried to talk, but he couldn’t quite tell. He couldn’t hear right, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t  _ breathe. _

—————

_ Bless Riley for being on top of things.  _ She had found a sedan on traffic cams with an erratically-blinking tail light, and she and Patty had decoded the Morse that Mac was patching though. He led them right to El Noche’s compound in Mexico. They had seen him tapping Jack’s number in Morse code all night as they followed the sedan’s path across the border. Mac must have been exhausted by now, in the middle of the morning.

“Alright, Jack,” Patty said into the sat phone. Jack was having a bit of trouble hearing her over the deafening roar of the helicopter rotors. “They’ve just dragged Mac into the compound, he was alive and kicking.”

“Yeah, and he just better stay that way for another three minutes until I get there. We’ve got medical here, in case things get messy, but I’ll do my best to keep this clean and simple.”

When Jack got into the compound, however, nothing about it looked clean or simple. There were men sprawled on the ground in a large living area, all seemingly unconscious, despite the fact that none of the TAC guys had even gotten to this room yet. There was only one person moving, stalking towards a garish orange figure slumped in a chair. This bastard was going to shoot Mac, rather than let him be rescued. 

_ Nope. Not on my watch. _

Jack took the man down with a blow to the head from the butt of his gun, and turned his attention to Mac. Who looked awful. Not only was he still in his less-than-pristine prison uniform, with hair disheveled and the merest hint of stubble growing, but his eyes were wide, glassy and unseeing. If it weren’t for the horrible gasping noises Mac was making, Jack would think he was dead. 

“Hey, man. Got your message.” Jack crossed over to Mac, who didn’t so much as blink to register that he’d heard. Jack quickly cut the duct tape tying Mac’s wrists to the chair arms. Again, no response, other than awful, gasping breaths. “Mac?”

As Jack tapped Mac on the cheek (the one without the nasty-looking bruise on it from Mac’s fight in the prison yard), finally he responded with a hazy blink. “Ja-a-ack?” he asked around a painful-sounding gasp. 

“Yeah, man, I’m here.”

“I. I can’t, Jack. I ca-an’t, I can’t—” Hearing Mac try to get words out was heartbreaking. His voice was shot: too deep and rasping, like he’d smoked a pack of cigarettes and then drank a whole bottle of whiskey, neat. “I can’t bre-eathe.” Where were the damn medics?

Jack took Mac’s hand in his. “It’s gonna be okay, hoss, I’m here. I’m right here. Got some medevac here too. What’d they give you?”

Mac’s eyes rolled as he blinked. They seemed cloudy, and the pupils were dilated too far in. Mac stammered out something, but Jack couldn’t make it out. It was only when Mac absently looked at a gas canister on the floor that Jack saw the label: Nitrogen.

Finally, someone came in with medical supplies. And an oxygen mask. The young man —maybe in his early thirties — explained that if Mac had been forced to inhale pure nitrogen, it would have replaced all the oxygen in his body, so he needed more. They were going to give him a mask pumping pure oxygen, which would offset the effects of the nitrogen enough to stabilise Mac for transport across the border. 

The only problem was, the second they tried to get the oxygen mask over Mac’s face, he struggled like there was no tomorrow. Jack knew Mac preferred a nasal cannula any day, but he would deal with a mask if he had to. He had no idea why Mac was panicking so severely, unless…

Upon a closer inspection of the nitrogen tank and surrounding equipment, he discovered a mask almost identical to the one they had tried to get on Mac.  _ No wonder he’s freaking out. _ But he still needed to breathe in some extra oxygen, so Jack had to do what he did best: talk Mac into letting Jack save his life.

“Hey, Mac, I’m right here. Can you hear me?” Mac nodded weakly. “I know you don’t like oxygen masks. And I’m gettin’ the idea that you would really, really love to not wear one again today.” Mac nodded again, a little more firmly. Jack continued. “I’m real sorry about this, hoss, but you’ve got to have it on, at least for a little while. I promise I’m here, I promise nothing’s gonna hurt you. It’s just oxygen.” He took a breath from the mask himself, to illustrate. “See?”

Mac hesitated before nodding again. Jack shooed the medic away, took Mac’s hand, and put it over the oxygen mask. “Here, I’ll let you put it on. Might be better if you feel like you’ve got it.”

Even though he was visibly shaking, Mac raised the mask to his face. Jack was proud, and very, very upset with El Nacho for messing up his kid so bad. Jack didn’t stop talking the whole time, telling Mac that he was doing great, that Patty and Riley were both anxious to see him, that El Noche was going to be put back behind bars for the rest of his life. 

After almost a full minute, Mac flung the mask away with a gasp almost like a sob. “I can’t… I can’t do it anymore. Please, Jack, no more.”

Jack’s heart broke because he knew Mac needed more than just a minute’s oxygen, but he  _ was  _ sounding better. And seemed a bit stronger, if his death-grip on Jack’s hand was any indication. 

  
“Alright, hoss, that can be all, for now. We’ll see what the doc says once we get you airborne. You did great.”

He lifted Mac to his feet, and helped him walk out of the compound. Jack was practically carrying him, but he knew Mac always preferred to stand on his own two feet if he was at all able. 

Mac got another minute or so of oxygen in the helicopter, but when the medic saw Mac’s extreme reaction, decided that enough was enough. They would go to the nearest stateside hospital, instead of flying immediately to Phoenix, and get Mac on a nasal cannula ASAP. 

—————

A few hours later, Mac was asleep, and Jack was dozing off to the soft, steady hiss of the ventilator and the constant beeping of the monitors. Mac had taken the nasal cannula much better than the mask, and it hadn’t taken a whole lot of time for him to fall asleep. His body was trying to repair the damage that breathing in pure nitrogen had done (thank God Patty had called ahead and told the nurses not to ask stupid questions like “how” and “why”). 

Jack was startled out of his half-asleep state by Mac whimpering and trying to struggle with something. He was trying to get the nasal cannula off, but it seemed like his hands weren’t obeying him as well as he thought they should. Jack caught one of the flailing hands with his own. 

“Hey. Hey, shhh. It’s okay, Mac. You’re safe, Jack’s here. I’m here.” He could see Mac processing the words, and going still again. 

“Jack?” Mac whispered, and his voice sounded so much better than it had earlier.

Jack smiled. “Present and accounted for. Nurses say you can ship out for home in a few hours.” He swallowed. He didn’t really want Mac to go back to sleep; the pair of them both hated when either of them were in hospital beds. But Mac needed rest, especially after his decidedly restless time in prison. “You should go back to sleep while we wait.”

Mac’s eyes were less cloudy, but no less dazed. This time, Jack hoped it was from sleep, and not the nitrogen still. “Will… will you stay?”

“Yeah, I ain’t goin’ anywhere, kiddo. You get some rest.” Mac’s eyes began to drift shut again. Jack ran the pad of his thumb across Mac’s knuckles. “Rest easy, Mac. I’ll be right here.”


	14. Day 14: Is something burning?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Mac's POV and continuation of Day 8: isolation. 
> 
> I do not know Venezuelan Spanish (or any Spanish). I use one word, "catire," which google says is Venezuelan dialect for "blond" or "blondie." If anyone wants to correct me on that, I would be eternally grateful.

Alone in his chilly cell, Mac paced back and forth. It was three steps by maybe two-and-a-half steps: about 7.5 x 6.25 feet. The ceiling was about a foot and a half over his head. If he stood on his toes, he could reach it. But there was nothing he could do with that information. There was nothing but a single pot-light in the ceiling, and Mac could tell that it wouldn’t be enough to get him out. It was barely enough to see by. There was also a wall socket on the wall opposite the door, but unless Mac fancied shocking himself to ease his boredom — which he didn’t because burns suck — that was another dead end.

They had taken his knife, his phone, and the paperclips in his pocket. They didn’t get the one in his shirt sleeve-cuff, but again, he knew it wouldn’t be enough all by itself to get him out. They had gone in without comms, because the goal was to get captured while waiting for a virus Riley made to take out the entirety of Rojas’ cartel’s darkweb presence. He and Jack were both biding their time, distracting Rojas and his men until the virus had uploaded. 

“Distracting” here meaning “providing a punching bag for.”

Mac wasn’t a stranger to pain, and he could take a beating just as well as Jack. He was nowhere near as vocal as Jack was when being interrogated. Mac opted for the strong-and-silent strategy, while Jack held out by distracting himself and his captors by shouting and singing. Mac could hear him now, actually. He couldn’t quite make out the song. Probably Rolling Stones or AC/DC, or something along that vein. 

It bothered Mac that he couldn’t be near Jack, couldn’t help to reassure him after they were tortured. Although he knew that if they were together, Jack would be doing everything in his power to take the cartel members’ attention off of Mac and onto himself. Which irritated Mac to no end, that Jack thought Mac was worth more than he was, somehow. 

It had been about a day and a half. Mac had been beaten, bruised, kicked and one of his shoulders had dislocated. Relocating it after they had left had been excruciatingly painful, but at least he could move both of his arms now with only minimal discomfort. Then they had waterboarded him. 

Mac hated waterboarding. He would rather face almost any other kind of torture. Something about drowning, about having no control over his spasming lungs and panicking body, was absolutely terrifying. He didn’t like not being in control of himself. Fortunately, they had only done it once so far. 

And now, he was just pacing, trying to expel some of his nervous energy, and waiting. Waiting for Riley’s virus to upload — it should have, by now — and for the TAC team to bust them out. Or maybe just waiting for Rojas’ thugs to come back and knock him around again. Just waiting. 

The door screeched open. Mac had learned the hard way not to try and fight his way out the door, because there were always more than one man on the other side of it, and they were all bigger than he was. He couldn’t take them all at once, and especially not now that he was hurt and tired. Two men filed in, one holding what looked like a stick at his side. It immediately caught Mac’s attention: if he could get it from the guy, he might be able to overpower both of them, and escape and find Jack. He was tired of waiting on the TAC team, he wanted to go home.

But the man saw Mac’s gaze train on the object, and chuckled. “Not much use until we plug it in,  _ catire. _ ” He pulled a short extension cord from his pocket, and plugged one end into the end of the device. 

The other guy stepped toward Mac, and deftly dodged the punch Mac tried to land on him. He caught Mac’s swinging fist and used it to slam Mac onto his back, fastening his wrists into the shackles in the floor. Mac shuddered once he got his breath back. This was exactly how waterboarding him a few hours ago had started.

The man with the fancy stick plugged the cord into the wall socket.  _ So that’s why that’s there, _ Mac thought, not liking this even a little bit. Now closer to the device, he recognised it as a picana, a crueller variant of a cattle prod, modified specifically for use in human torture. It would deliver high voltage but a low electric current. In layman's terms, it would hurt like hell, but wouldn’t kill him unless these men were really bad at their job.

Mac tried to kick, but both of the men had moved out of his reach. One of them took hold of a metal gizmo with a few switches and dials on it — the rheostat for the picana, which controlled the voltage — and the other clicked the picana a few times in the air, experimentally. It made the light flicker slightly.

“You know what’s going to happen to you,  _ catire _ ?” Mac’s Spanish fluency was more Mexican than Venezuelan, but he had also spent some time in a largely Spanish-speaking prison. He had heard the word “catire” directed at him more than once, it meant “blond,” or “blondie.” He hadn’t liked it then, he didn’t like it now. “Yes, you know, I can tell you’re smart. You’re going to tell us how you broke into our compound, or my friend Joaquin and I will shock you with this. And I do not think I need to tell you that it will hurt a lot.”

Yeah, Mac had figured. But the TAC team should be on their way, because it only took 24 hours for Riley’s virus to upload. So all he had to do was hold out until they got there. He set his jaw and turned his gaze up to the ceiling, forcing his mind to go blank. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man lunge, and felt the bronze tip of the picana hit his ribs. Some of the voltage was dissipated by his shirt and flannel, but most of it jolted right through Mac’s body. He gasped, clamping his mouth shut to keep from crying out. He had been right, it hurt like hell.

When the metal prod broke contact with his body, Mac’s fingers were trembling. He had worked so hard to train tremors out of his hands, first as a chemist, and then as an EOD tech. He hated when his hands shook, it was yet another thing he couldn’t control. 

“You feel like sharing anything?”

Mac glared. And decided to channel a bit of his inner Jack. “Yeah, sure. I spend most of my time with a straight-up cowboy, I’ve been hit with cattle prods that have hurt worse than that.” He wasn’t normally talkative while he was tortured, and tried to avoid egging his captors on, but he was angry, and impatient.

The metal jammed into his side again, and because Mac didn’t have any time to steel himself, a yelp escaped his lips before he clacked his jaw shut. He was having trouble breathing; his whole body seemed to lock up, including his lungs. He could have sworn the room grew dimmer, but whether that was the picana dimming the lights or his own eyesight failing briefly, he didn’t know.

The third time they zapped him, it was on the bare skin near his collarbone. Without the fabric of his shirts to diffuse some of the voltage, it hit him full force. He screamed. He tried not to. He knew Jack could hear him, and he didn’t want Jack to worry himself into a frenzy. It had been known to happen. But it hurt so bad, he just couldn’t clamp down on it.

They kept poking him with their overglorified cattle prod, and asking questions. Mac could barely hear their questions, and he wasn’t sure his voice would work to answer, even if he wanted to. His back arched, heels scrabbling for purchase against the cold concrete floor and finding none. His eyes slammed shut, rolling in his head as the light above flickered. He screamed as his body convulsed with the flow of electricity.

Finally, the two torturers seemed to have had enough, or at least decided that Mac was too far beyond coherent to continue. Mac heard the squeal of the door as if from far away. He couldn’t stop his breathing from sounding an awful lot like sobbing. He couldn’t stop his whole body from shaking. He couldn’t stop tears of pain from leaking from the corners of his eyes down to his sweat-soaked hair. 

If Mac had had any sort of presence of mind, he would have been worried about muscle spasms with the intensity to tear tendons and tissues. He would have cared that his nervous system might have been permanently affected, or his heart. But all he could do was lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and crying quietly.

—————

Jack heard booted feet running up to his cell door. They sounded like TAC boots, and his suspicions were confirmed when he heard an American-accented voice call through “Dalton? MacGyver? You in there?”

Jack was so happy he could cry. It had been a little over an hour since Mac’s awful screams had fallen silent, and Jack was driving himself up the walls with worry. He didn’t let the TAC team so much as look at his broken left arm once they got the door down, and he didn’t accept the offer of a shoulder to lean some of his weight on. No, he needed to find out which one of these doors hopefully still had a living, breathing Mac behind it.

They busted down two doors before they found the right one. The second the door was down, Jack hobbled over to Mac’s still body. His eyes were closed, and there were visible tear-tracks on his face. Jack wanted to punch something. Mac’s whole body trembled, even though he wasn’t conscious. His hands were up over his head, near but not bound by a pair of cuffs bolted to the ground.

“We need to move, Dalton. If he’s not waking up, someone’s gonna have to carry him.”

“I can carry him,” Jack said, moving to pick his boy up, but moving his broken arm caused him to hiss in pain.

Whatever TAC guy it was that had spoken said “Not with that arm, you aren’t, Jack. Here, let me.” And he bent down to pick up Mac. Jack watched him like a hawk the whole time, loath to let anyone but himself handle his kid, but even he had to admit that there was no way he could carry Mac with his broken arm.

They got out of the compound with no trouble, leaving a few guys to round up the rest of the cartel members. Halfway to the chopper, Mac stirred and groaned, calling out for Jack. They couldn’t stop, but Jack took Mac’s hand. “I’m right here, hoss, these are friendlies. We’re on our way out. I gotcha”

Mac was so out of it. Jack hoped it was all exhaustion and pain, but he knew that electricity could mess up the brain too. It was a wonder Mac’s brilliant mind had survived all the blows to the head and torture sessions that Mac had endured so far.  _ So young, _ Jack couldn’t help but think. Mac was so young, too young to have extensive experiences with gunshot wounds and waterboarding and damn electric shocks.

In the chopper, Mac’s eyes opened to slits, squinting up at Jack, who hadn’t left his side. One of the TAC guys — it might have been the same one who had carried Mac, but Jack was only focussing on his partner at the moment — was trying to wrap his arm, but Jack was having none of it. They weren’t too far from a hospital. Jack’s pain could wait. Right now, Mac was still shaking. 

Jack held him close, running his right hand through Mac’s hair. There was a nasty burn he could see on Mac’s neck, and he was sure that wasn’t the only one. He didn’t know if he was hurting Mac by holding him, but Mac didn’t seem to be showing any particular discomfort. So Jack kept holding on, babbling to fill the silence because when Mac tried to talk, his voice came out too hoarse, or not at all. 

Once they got to the hospital, they tried to whisk Mac away from him, but Jack made it clear, very clear, that where Mac went, Jack went. So they could just go ahead and treat his broken arm and Mac’s burns in the same damn room, thank you very much.

The worst burn was the one on his neck, but there was also a particularly bad one just under his seventh or eighth rib on the right side. It had singed Mac’s green flannel black in a large area, and two small holes had been burned clean through, where the prongs on whatever they had used to electrocute him had gone. There was also the matter of his right shoulder. It seemed that it had been dislocated and relocated at some point during their captivity, and convulsing while restrained hadn’t done that shoulder any favours. He would need to baby it for a long time before he got full use out of it. Lots of PT.

Mac was gonna be pissed. He hated PT, and anything else that forced him to be out of the field. Not that Mac didn’t love their days off, but if Mac was at anything less than 100% physically, he tended to feel like he wasn’t pulling his weight. No matter how many times  _ literally everyone _ had explained to him that that was ridiculous, that Mac did 110% all the time, so he had earned some medically-mandated R&R.

But hey, Mac would at least have company for this one. Jack had to sit out for a while too, because of his arm. Jac was sure they could find something to do together that didn’t require two hands. Even if it was just Scrabble or something (Jack hated playing Scrabble with Mac, actually, because Mac was a certified genius who cheated by trying to use chemical abbreviations as words).

But whether they played Scrabble or Mario Kart, or one-armed charades, or just watched Bruce Willis movies until they fell asleep on Mac’s couch, they’d have a fine time recovering together. 


	15. Day 15: Into the Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm bad with AUs, so I just went with "science gone wrong"  
> I'm also no chemist. There will be inaccuracies, guaranteed.

Jack was sprawled out grumpily on Mac’s couch. He was laid up with a sprained ankle, and pissed as hell. The entire rest of his body was fine except for one foot! He could still go into work, it was ridiculous that he couldn’t. And Mac was on the doc’s side, too. He hadn’t let Jack leave the house. 

So now, here he was, uselessly sitting on Mac’s couch. Mac was tinkering in his garage-lab, which the team fondly referred to as “the disaster area.” Not because Mac usually caused disasters, but because it was a cluttered mess that only Mac could navigate. He seemed to know what everything in there was, and exactly where it lived. Anyone else trying would go insane.

Last movie night, they had all watched Harry Potter 6, and whenever the room full of lost things was shown, they’d all crack jokes: “I didn’t know they filmed this movie here.” “Look Mac, it’s your lab!” “Damn, even this place is tidier than the disaster area.” But Mac had just laughed with them. He was good-natured about the mess, and his friends’ reactions to it. 

That day, Mac wasn’t playing with that old bike of his, or fixing the microwave (like he was supposed to have been doing for a week now). He was making some kind of chemical soup. Jack could smell it from the couch. Not terribly unpleasant, but no bouquet of roses either. 

The occasional hissing noises and sounds of bubbling and whatnot didn’t really faze Jack: he was busy reading a book to get his mind off of his blasted ankle. He had just picked up one of the books on the end table, the one that wasn’t a Jeep owner’s manual or “Modern Quantum Mechanics, Third Edition.” Because Jack might honestly rather die than read that. The book he had grabbed was  _ A Tale of Two Cities _ . Because even when Mac wasn’t reading textbooks for fun, he was still a nerd.

Jack read for a long time. He wore glasses for reading anything longer than a mission report, which irritated him because it meant he was getting old. Well, he refused to lick his fingers to turn pages, like his pop had done. If glasses were old, page-licking was ancient.

Suddenly, a loud explosion shook the house. 

Jack looked up from his book briefly, but he didn’t think a whole lot of the sound. It wasn’t like this was the first time Mac had blown something up in his lab garage. He would invariably yell out “I’m okay!” right after, and would open the door to air out some of whatever smoke had gathered.

But this time, the time between the explosion and the “I’m okay” dragged on, until Jack got worried. Mac always called out to reassure whoever might have heard. If he wasn’t doing so now, it meant he probably wasn’t okay at all.

Jack got up, setting the glasses down and grabbing a scarf off the hall tree as he hobbled to the garage door. Smoke was seeping from under the door, and came out like a wall when Jack opened it. The smoke tickled his throat, even through the scarf he tied around his face, and he coughed, waving some smoke away. 

“Mac?” he called out, trying not to run into anything or trip over Mac’s various doodads. Or the cast on his ankle.

There was no response, and Jack was now beyond scared.

His foot touched something soft, something that felt like it could very well be Mac. Jack knelt down. The air was a bit clearer, and he could see a bit better.

Mac was lying on his back, eyes closed. A quick check told Jack that Mac was breathing and his heart was beating, but the ends of Mac’s hair were singed, and his shirt was smoking. 

First order of business was to get Mac out of the smoke. It had a smell that was different from normal fire-smoke, it smelled a bit more noxious. It couldn’t have been good for Mac. But Jack didn’t trust himself to carry Mac, not with his ankle, so he settled for dragging his unconscious partner out to the living room. There, Jack patted Mac’s face until he woke up with a stuttering cough. 

“There you are, hoss. What the hell happened?” Jack sat back on the couch, easing Mac to sit up with him.

“I uh. I accidentally made some pyrophoric iron sulfide.” Jack raised an eyebrow, not understanding. “It explodes when it comes in contact with the air. It was an accidental by-product of my experiment.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Of course you accidentally blew yourself up. You know you’re damn lucky you didn’t singe your eyebrows off?” 

Mac raised a hand to his face, as if to check that it were all still there. “Well, the blast itself only dazed me. It was the fumes that knocked me out. I couldn’t get up, so I couldn’t open the door to let the fumes dissipate.”

“Or yell for help, it seems.”

Mac had the decency to look somewhat sheepish. “No, I didn’t. There wasn’t a whole lot of time between the explosion and me blacking out. Sorry.”

Mac not asking for help wasn’t new. Mac apologising for it was. “It’s alright, Mac, you just scared me, that’s all. You sure you’re alright? That smoke wasn’t toxic, was it?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. And so will you: I assume you breathed some in as well. It was just the high concentration of it that got me. Once it’s out of its enclosed space, it’s no more harmful than ordinary woodsmoke.”

“Good,” Jack grumbled. “But you’re still gonna take it easy for a bit. No more lab-kabooms.”

“No more lab-kabooms,” Mac agreed. “Not today, at least.”


	16. Day 16: Terrible, horrible day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I ain't writing that whole title out...
> 
> Slight AU of when Mac and Riley went rogue. Instead of saving Codex's ass to prove their loyalty, Gwen goes a bit further (though I suppose the whole missile-nonsense can happen later in the story)
> 
> Insert my obligatory "this can be MacRiley if you want it to be, I guess" warning

When Mac went rogue, Riley’s whole world turned upside down. The very idea that Mac would turn on them was heartbreaking, and it just didn’t sit right with her. Mac loved his job, even if he had doubts sometimes about their missions. He knew that they were saving lives, even if he tended to hyperfixate on the lives that were lost.

She couldn’t believe he would up and leave them, couldn’t believe that kind, altruistic Angus MacGyver would want to join an organisation whose primary goal was to wipe out a quarter of the planet. No matter how many of his family members were connected to it. She would have thought that the family their team had made would be more important to him than an aunt he hadn’t known existed and his long-dead mom who, by all accounts, had gone a little off the deep end.

So she tracked him down. She followed him with every intention of making him see reason. Of forcing the Mac she knew and trusted to come back.

Only to find that he had never truly been gone. Mac’s defection had been a cover, a ruse to get intel on Codex. He knew in his heart that Codex was wrong — psychotic — even if he sometimes had doubts. And now that Riley had appeared, he explained, she had to keep up their cover as well, by obeying orders and pretending to denounce Phoenix. 

And when her orders were simple, like “you’ll be bunking here” or “report to Lab 44-Alpha to meet with Titan,” well, those were easy to follow. She dropped her (thoroughly searched) bag off in the spartan but clean room next to Mac’s, and set off in search of Lab 44-A. 

Mac had told her about his Aunt Gwen when she had arrived. That she was extremely intelligent, and could be good-natured, funny, and generally pleasant. But he had also told her that she had something of a god-complex, that she truly believed that killing millions to save billions was the right thing to do. Mac’s anger had bled into his voice when he told her that Gwendolyn Hayes was willing to sacrifice millions of innocent people to restart humanity. 

And this was the woman Riley had been ordered to meet with. Alone. 

She had to admit, Gwen Hayes cut an impressive figure as the Codex’s Titan. She was tall, smartly-dressed, with bright, intelligent blue eyes that reminded her a lot of Mac’s. She smiled at Riley as she came in, and shook her hand.

“Miss Davis. Lovely to meet you. Riley, isn’t it?” She stepped back, looking Riley over. “You look like you’ve had some field training. That’s wonderful. But Angus has told me your real skills are with computers.”

Conversation went along that vein, of somewhat stilted pleasantries that Riley didn’t really know what to do with. She didn’t like that this woman knew so much about her.

“Well, I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you down here. It’s simple, really. You formerly worked for the Phoenix Foundation, and they were… well, I guess we could call them problematic. A thorn in our side, as it were.

“And you and my nephew have come here, to us. It must have cost you a lot, going rogue. You had friends there that you were willing to walk away from. You must have truly believed that we’re right.” Riley suppressed a shudder at the very thought. “But forgive me if I test you, the way I test everyone who defects to us.”

“A test?” Riley asked, trying to keep her nerves out of her voice.

Gwen laughed. “Nothing I think you’d be incapable of, nothing a trained field agent couldn’t do.” She led Riley into a room off the side of the lab. It was small, and empty except for a bound, blindfolded figure. 

Riley’s eyes widened. “Who’s he?”

Gwen circled the man, who was trembling in the ropes that held him. “A rival. A British scientist that the EU has designing bombs. You must know, if you are to join us, Riley, that Codex is not an intelligence agency in the normal sense. What we prize most is scientific progress. And if that progress is used to design weapons of war, of destruction, then we get angry. Our enemy is not a government, a nation, or even humanity itself. It is the misuse of science.”

She pulled a gun from under her blazer-jacket. “This man has been instrumental in that arena. I want you to prove to me that you are devoted to our cause. I want you to prove to me you have what it takes to rid the world of people like him, who turn knowledge into evil.” Gwen pressed the gun into Riley’s hand. 

Riley’s brain was working a mile a minute. Mac had told her that if their covers were blown, they could be killed. But she couldn’t kill an innocent man. Not like this, tied up and scared. She could see tears leaking out from under the blindfold, and he looked too frightened to try to speak. And Gwen believed this man was the one doing evil? The very idea was absurd. She would have laughed if it wasn’t so dangerous. And if she could be sure it wouldn’t come out hysterically high-pitched.

She couldn’t blow her cover. That would put her life and Mac’s at risk. She needed to appease Mac’s crazy aunt. She had to do this. But she didn’t have to like it. She only hesitated a moment. Her hands were shaking as she levelled the gun, and fired. 

She dropped the smoking gun, and Gwen smiled. “Well done, Riley!”

Riley squeezed her eyes closed. “I haven’t been in the field very long,” she lied. “I’m still not quite used to… to this.” She gestured at the body.

Gwen put a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “Any life lost is a waste. But this man gave over his life when he agreed to build weapons of mass destruction. You rid the world of someone dangerous.” Riley was beginning to wish she had held onto the gun, so she could rid the world of someone more dangerous. “You’ll likely not have to do that again. If you’re as good with a computer as Angus says, I think you’ll enjoy the tech we can give you access to. You don’t have to go out into the field unless you want to.

“Now, you should go back to your room. They’ve already shown you where you’re staying?” Riley nodded, somewhat absently. “Good,” Gwen continued. “Then you go back up, settle in. There’s a timetable of meals and whatnot on the desk in there, and you’re right next to Angus. He knows his way around pretty well by now, so you should be able to ask him if you have any questions. And after dinner, he and I can give you a tour.” It sounded like being checked into a hotel or something. It set Riley’s teeth on edge how normal Gwen was acting after she’d just had Riley murder someone.

Mac was waiting for her in her room, reading. He set the book down as soon as she walked in, and immediately his brow furrowed. “You look upset. Are you alright?”

Riley closed her door, and spoke softly. She didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be anyone eavesdropping. “No, Mac, I’m not alright. That woman is a lunatic! She said she wanted to test me, to make sure I would be loyal. She had me kill someone. I don’t even know who he was, she said he was a British scientist.”

Mac sighed. “I’m sorry, Riles. I’m sorry you had to do that. As grateful as I am that I’m not here alone, a part of me wishes you hadn’t found me.”

Riley looked up at him. He was the same height as his aunt, and actually, they looked quite a bit alike. She frowned. “Did she make you do that too? It’s just, you don’t use guns. Would she have allowed that?”

“She didn’t test me at all, not like that.” Mac ran a hand through his short hair. “She had been planting doubts in my head from the moment I met her, so all I had to do to convince her was to give over. Tell her she was right, and that Codex’s plan is the ethical, moral thing to do.” He spat the words out as if they left a bad taste on his tongue. “That, and I laid on thick that I wanted to know more about my mom, and finish what she started.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to react to that. What could she say,  _ I’m sorry your mom turned out to be just as crazy as the rest of your family? I’m glad you turned out sane? _

As it turned out, she didn’t need to say anything. Mac looked into her face, no doubt seeing her misgivings about their entire plan. “It’s gonna work out okay, Riles,” he said softly. “We can take them down, from the inside. We can stop them from killing more people. I’m sorry your test was so awful. And I know I never take this advice, but sometimes, the life of one man isn’t worth the life of millions.”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?” Riley quipped, raising an eyebrow. She had watched Star Trek as a kid to spite Jack, who would always and forever prefer Star Wars, and she knew Mac had watched some with his grandfather when he was little.

Mac chuckled. “I guess so. And I know that makes me sound like her, trying to justify genocide. I just mean that you did what you had to to keep our covers.”

“Doesn’t make this suck any less,” she muttered.

“No,” Mac agreed. “No, it doesn’t.”


	17. Day 17: I did not see that coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of day 12, where Mac and Riley deal with their broken trust in Jack, and Jack returns with every intention of fixing it. Here, Jack tells Mac the truth about why he left.
> 
> This is AU. I have all the respect in the world for George Eads and respect his decision to leave the show, but I don't think Jack would have ever left Mac if he could at all help it. And it seems to be a pretty common idea for the whole Kovacs debacle to be James' fault, so I expanded on that. James also isn't dead (though he does need to be punched something awful).

The team had a fire-pit night as a whole team for the first time in far too long. Everyone was there, even Desi joined. And Jack regaled them with somewhat-exaggerated stories of his mission, and they told him all about what had happened on the home front. 

It felt so good to be back. Jack had to stop himself from tearing up as he looked around at his family: his badass boss-lady, his surrogate daughter and his son in all but blood, the ball of sunshine who was Bozer. And his old friend, his hand-picked replacement.

They had all assured him that while Desi had taken over Jack’s job watching the team’s back, she could never take Jack’s place. There was room enough in the team for two gunslingers. He was welcomed back with open arms. He felt like he hardly deserved it. 

Mac offered him the spare room, and he gratefully accepted. He had been on his own for so long that now that he had Mac in his sights, he never wanted to be anywhere else.

As everyone filed out to go to their respective homes, and Riley went up to her bed (Jack had given the two of them quite a bit of good-natured shit when he found out they were living together. They just glared, also good-naturedly), Mac and Jack were left alone on the couch. They were quiet for a long while. 

Jack was desperate to tell Mac everything. His mission had been largely classified, and he had already told the team more than he probably should have, just in their story-swapping alone, but Mac deserved the truth. Not about the mission, it had been pretty straightforward. They track down Kovacs, they take him in or kill him, and they get rid of all traces of his work. No, the difficult part was why. Why Jack had needed to go, why he had broken every promise he had ever made to Mac that he would stay. 

All through the mission, Jack had been desperate to go home, and also terrified. That detached look in Mac’s eyes as they shook hands had meant that Mac was compartmentalising Jack’s betrayal, and was preparing himself to meet it head up, back straight, like the soldier he had trained to be. Jack knew that by leaving, he was adding fuel to the barely-contained fire that were Mac’s abandonment and trust issues. And Jack also knew that after leaving, breaking that trust, he had no right to come back and demand to return to his old place at Mac’s side. He didn’t have the right to even beg for it, but he would have.

But Mac had welcomed him back gladly, with a strong embrace (and a few tears from both parties). Jack didn’t deserve it. And he guessed that was as good a place as any to begin talking.

“Mac, I’m sorry.”

Mac had been spacing out into the dying embers of the firepit, and Jack’s words seemed to startle him out of some faraway thought. “Huh?”

“I said I’m sorry. For going. I always tried to be there for you, always told you I would be.”

Mac looked somewhat uncomfortable, but also sad. “I know you did. You always were there for me, Jack. But it’s okay. You made a promise you couldn’t keep, and I’ve always known you wouldn’t be able to keep it.” He smiled ruefully. “No good thing can last forever. I was upset, but I understood. I understand.”

“No, no you don’t.” Jack swallowed. He wasn’t at liberty to give out this information. He could be fired, would likely be fired, for telling Mac. But he needed to. He couldn’t let Mac live a second longer thinking that Jack had left of his own accord. “You don’t understand, because you don’t know the whole story. I didn’t tell you everything.”

Mac’s brow furrowed, caught between confused and suspicious.

Jack continued. “I never lied to you. Never. I suppose my promises don’t mean a whole lot to you right now, but I didn’t lie when I told you I didn’t want to go on the Kovacs mission. But I didn’t tell you why I had to go, I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

“Why not?” Mac asked softly.

“I was ordered not to. Specifically ordered to not tell specifically you. And there it is. You’re the reason I had to leave. Not because of anything you’ve done, or because I didn’t care anymore, nothin’ like that. I had to leave because you were in danger. It went against everything in me, but it worked. You’re safe.”

Mac looked very confused. “Jack, what are you talking about? What kind of danger could I have gotten in that would have gone away when you left?”

Jack knew that James MacGyver and his son had been getting closer. Going out to lunch, working on projects, even going on a few missions together. And that last thought chilled his blood. The man that Jack had encouraged Mac for years to reach out to, to track down and at least try to make amends with, going out into the field with Mac after…

“He started with threatening me, but you know I don’t give a damn about that. He could take my job, my apartment, my cars — heaven forbid, and I hope someone’s been looking after them — but none of that could really hurt me, you know?”

“Who—?” Jack cut Mac off, not finished.

“I think he knew that. So he threatened the one thing I care most about. He threatened you.”

“Jack,  _ who? _ Who’s threatened us?” Mac looked angry, but not at Jack. Angry in general, waiting for a name to focus it on. And Jack didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to cause Mac to lose what ground he had won after years and years of pain. 

“You… you deserve the truth, Mac. After all this time away, everything I wasn’t here for… You’re not gonna like it, but here it is. Oversight decided that our whole codependent bromance gig wasn’t a good idea. He decided to split us up. Permanently.”

The kid blinked, stunned. “Oversight? My… my dad? Why would he... ?” Mac trailed off, licking his lips. “What do you mean ‘permanently’?”

“As in, forever. The Kovacs mission was suicide, man. I lost so many good men and women on that op. I wasn’t supposed to survive it. Why do you think I got Desi, the best of the best, besides me, to watch your back while I was away? Why’d you think I was so torn up that one night, the week before I left? I was never supposed to see you again, and I couldn’t even tell you why.” There were tears in Jack’s eyes now, and as he looked at Mac, he saw the boiling anger back. Now it had a focus point.

“Why would he do that? We’re the best team Phoenix has, why would he want to separate us? Why would he go so extreme? He’s the one who brought us together in the first place!”

“I dunno, Mac. All I know is what he told me. He called me up to his office and told me he had a mission for me to take charge of. That my team was already picked, that it was a long-haul op, and that I’d have to leave you all. I refused unless you could go with me. That’s when he threatened me. He said he could fire me, have me blacklisted from any intelligence agency in the world. I told him to stuff it.

“But your old man, he’s… well. He’s smart, I’ll give him that. He knew that the only way to get me to break was you. That’s not a bad thing,” Jack said quickly as guilt flashed over Mac’s face. “You know I’d do anything to protect you. The problem was, so did he. So he threatened your life. He literally threatened not only to fire you and whatnot, but to send you on suicide missions or sell information about you to various enemies.”

Mac’s eyes were wide as dinner plates, and his hands were shaking. “He… no. He wouldn’t have…” He looked to Jack, his eyes pleading. Begging Jack to tell him that his own father hadn’t been more than willing to have him harmed or killed. But Jack couldn’t lie to his kid. Never again.

“I’m sorry, Mac. All that time I said you should chase him down, because you would regret it. And the years you spent making nice with him again. I wish I could say ‘April fools’ and laugh. But it’s October. And I can’t. I’m sorry, Mac,” he said again, as a tear fell glistening down Mac’s cheek.

Jack could see the moment something in Mac broke. The strain from all the years finally cracking. Mac had been borderline emotionally and mentally abused by James even before he had gone AWOL, and when he left, he had left Mac with invisible scars that time could never heal. More than fifteen years spent wondering if he could have done something better to keep his dad around, if he could have been good enough, and the man just shows up out of the blue, and tries to pretend all could be well again. And Mac had to try, because that was just who he was. 

But some people weren’t worth a second or third chance. 

Jack knew he was walking thin ice. He knew he was on his own “second or third chance.” But as Mac collapsed, crying tears of frustration and fear and anger, Jack pushed that away. All he knew now was that his kid needed him. 

Mac cried as Jack held him. Months of pushing himself too hard and missing his best friend and now a total bombshell dropped on his head all combined to make him cling tightly to Jack’s shirt. Jack would have been lying if he said he didn’t cry too. 

After a while, Mac looked up at Jack. “What’s going to happen now?” he asked softly.

Jack sighed, running his hand through Mac’s hair. “I dunno, hoss. But I know one thing: you and me, we’re gonna face it together. No amount of threatening is gonna take me away from your side again. And I’d be willing to bet that all these people we hang out with feel the same way.” 

Mac smiled weakly. “He… he really is a terrible dad, isn’t he?” he asked. “I’ve always known it, but I never wanted to say it. I always thought if I didn’t admit it, it might get better. He might be better. But he isn’t. He’s the same man who left me as a kid. He’s just gotten better at hiding it.”

Jack smiled back. “That he has. And he was a shitty dad, you’re absolutely right. Not that I’m not glad you were born, but I don’t think he should have had kids in the first place. Definitely not the right kind of guy.” Mac was chuckling softly now, and it broadened Jack’s grin. He had been waiting months to insult James MacGyver to his son’s face. 

“Definitely not the right kind of guy to be a good dad,” Mac said, curling closer into Jack’s embrace. The implications of Mac’s words and actions were not lost on Jack, and he felt himself tear up again.  _ We’ll be alright, _ he thought,  _ me and Mac. _ And because it was so important a thought, he had to voice it out loud.

“We’ll be alright, Mac. Whatever he throws at us. Whatever happens. We’ll be alright.”

Mac smiled. “I know we will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered having Jack tell Riley a more watered-down version of why he left (leaving out some of the more personal details like how much of a dickhead James is), but it was getting long and it was getting late. Someday, maybe, I'll continue this: Jack and Riley will mend, Mac will confront James for being a terrible dad, and James will get punched. Someday.


	18. Day 18: Panic! at the disco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And I'm finally caught up! This was the first one I wrote, actually. We had a real big, real close thunderstorm and this just wrote itself in my head.  
> Insert my usual "MacRiley if you're looking for it" spiel.

Riley blinked awake. 

She quickly squeezed her eyes back shut, unsure of why she woke but not yet willing to be fully conscious. Her bedside clock cheerfully blinked 3:21 am. An hour of the day (night?) that Jack always used to call “stupid-o’clock”. 

But what had woken her? She could hear rain out her window and on the roof, but that wouldn’t have done it. The house was quiet — Mac’s house usually was, unless he was tinkering with something or the team was over, and no one was home but her and Mac. 

Suddenly, the house seemed to shake to its foundations. A cacophonous rumble filled what had been silence. Riley’s window rattled, and she was afraid for a moment that the mirror hanging on the wall would fall and shatter. Thunder. It was a thunderstorm. A little out of season, but fall was still known to have storms pass through LA. The lightning flash must have been what startled her awake.

As the roaring died away, Riley heard a strange sound in its wake. A muffled whimpering cry, echoing in the deafening silence left after the thunderclap. Just as soon as she was sure she had heard it and not imagined it, the sound died away.

It could only have been Mac, he was the only other person in the house, so Riley got up and softly walked down the hall to Mac’s room. The walls were briefly illuminated by another bolt of lightning, showing framed pictures of their little family, and various doodads hung up like trophies.

Knocking briefly crossed her mind as she stood outside Mac’s door, but then the thunder caught up with the lightning from earlier. It was a less explosive booming than before, but still very loud. And yet not loud enough to drown out another whimper from the other side of the door. Riley went in.

The hall light came in through the open door, right across Mac’s bed, where he was no more than a shaking lump of blankets. “Oh, Mac,” Riley murmured, crossing to the bed. He didn’t seem to hear her. She gently brought the blanket down from over his head.

His eyes were clenched shut and he was curled into an impossibly tiny ball. Sweat darkened his short blond hair. Mac’s entire body was trembling and his hands were pressed tight over his ears, making him look for all the world like a scared little kid. And the fact that he hadn’t responded in any way to either Riley‘s voice or her uncovering of him worried her.

She sat gingerly beside him on the bed, unsure of what to do. She had dealt with Mac having nightmares before, or waking up drugged — both in hospitals and out — but this looked closer to a full-on panic attack, and Jack had always been the one to get Mac through those.

But Jack was gone, hunting down Kovacs; had been for a little while now. It was just Riley, and she didn’t even know where to start with the shaking mess that was MacGyver.

Could she touch him? Mac tended to lash out if woken from a nightmare suddenly. But with his hands over his ears and the noise of the storm, Riley doubted he would hear her if she tried to reach him without touching him. So she laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

Mac curled up tighter, as if trying to become so small that he would disappear, and shook his head.

“Mac, come on, you’ve gotta wake up. You've gotta snap out of it, can you hear me?” Riley asked as she gently shook him.

“No… No, it’s too late…” Mac moaned. Riley frowned.

“Too late? Too late for what? Mac, hey, you’re alright, open your eyes. Come on, Mac, come back to me.”

Mac blinked his eyes open, uncovering his ears just a little. He started to babble, telling her she shouldn’t be there, it wasn’t safe, couldn’t she see — but a sharp flash of lightning stole his words. He gasped out “This is all my fault…” and closed his eyes again.

“What’s your fault, Mac? Nothing’s wrong, you’re safe.” Riley knew Mac tended to blame himself when things went wrong, but she couldn’t tell him otherwise when she didn’t know what he was blaming himself for.

The thunderclap made Mac yelp, and he flung his arms around Riley‘s waist, clinging to her like a lifeline.

“It’s my fault,” he whimpered. “I didn’t disarm it in time and now we’re in danger. They’re all, all in danger, can’t you hear the explosions?” Mac seemed to be having difficulty breathing, if his choppy words were any indication. He was spiraling down into panic mode fast, but now Riley at least knew what the problem was. The thunder sounded like exploding bombs to him — probably IEDs from his time in Afghanistan. And the flashing lightning probably wasn’t helping a whole lot either.

She needed to pull him out, ground him to something. So she ran her fingers through his hair like Jack always did, and began to talk.

“Mac, you’re home, nothing is exploding. Everything‘s all right, you’re not in any danger, none of us are. Your home, in California, in your own bed.” She rubbed her free hand over his back and shoulders. “I’m right here.”

A sudden flash of genius hit her. Jack almost always got Mac out of his own head by making him think. And now Riley thought she had a way to do just that, and simultaneously ground Mac a little better in his present location, instead of his past.

“Okay, Mac, I’m going to ask a question. What can you tell me about the US? The United States. Give me some info.” She hoped desperately that talking would stop the keening whimpers and rapid, gasping breaths.

Mac blinked up at her, confused, and obviously still not quite in the present. “The... the US? Why...?”

“Just talk to me about it. Pretend I’ve never heard of it.”

Mac swallowed, still confused, but Riley could see in his eyes that he was thinking hard.

“The United States of America started out as several colonies. Settlers came from Europe. Britain... France... Netherlands. A majority of the colonies were governed by… by the British. In seventeen... in seventeen seventy… six, the colonists signed a declaration of independence from Britain, and became an independent nation…”

Riley wondered if Mac was quoting a textbook or just rattling off facts. It hadn’t quite slowed down his breathing, but he seemed to be trembling a bit less. The death-grip his arms had around her loosened slightly.

“... Now it’s one of the most technolo— technologically, and… and scientifically advanced nations in the world…”

Riley interrupted. “Very good. Now what can you tell me about Californ—”

Rolling thunder cut her off.

Mac buried his face into Riley‘s stomach, muffling a cry.

“Hey, hey it’s alright. I’m still here,” Riley soothed. “You’re going to be alright. California now, Mac, tell me about it. What’s cool about it?”

Mac shuddered but still looked like he was thinking. “Uh, um, it’s the… the most populated state, um. State mineral is benitoite… which is basically just a barium titanium cyclosilicate that…”

Riley understood none of those words, but was beyond happy that Mac was sciencing. His breathing slowed some as he explained the properties of whatever benitoite was. But she needed to finish asking the questions, because Mac could talk about minerals no matter where he thought he was.

She asked about LA, and he told her about the light rail system — the busiest in the country — and the eleven miles of hidden tunnels under the city dating from the early 1900s. She asked about the house, and he told her he had lived there with his grandfather after his father left. He told her about the secret escape hatch he built a long time ago, and that he’d had to repair the fire pit twice. With each question she went smaller and closer to where they were for Mac.

He was so much calmer now, his sentences were less halting and choppy, and he actually chuckled when telling her about his fire pit fiasco from the year before they had met. The thunder still caused him to shake and cling tighter to her, but it was becoming fewer and farther between, and Mac recovered from the noises faster each time.

”Okay, Mac, how about this room? What room are we in?” Riley changed up her question a bit, asking for information about where Mac was. He could spout trivia anywhere, anytime. But now…

Mac looked around him for the first time all night. “We’re in my room. That ceiling fan,” he pointed, “it’s making a rattling noise, I need to fix it. And I need more paper clips.” The jar full of paper clips on Mac’s night table was indeed running low.

Mac’s focus had shifted from around his room to Riley. His eyes were clear, and finally present. “And you’re here. Because…” He extricated himself slowly from his position curled around her like an octopus, and listened to the rain outside. “Because of the storm. Damn. I’m sorry I woke you.”

Riley yawned. “First of all, you didn’t wake me, the storm did. I came in here to check on you. Second, you don’t have to be sorry, even if you had woken me. I’m here whenever you need me. Now, are you okay?”

Mac frowned slightly, still obviously unhappy in thinking that he had inconvenienced Riley somehow. “Yeah, I’m okay. It seems like it’s just rain now. And I like the rain okay. It’s just thunder that… I just don’t deal well with it.” He sighed. “It sounds like bombs going off, to me, and that’s… that’s an EOD tech’s worst nightmare. Lightning makes it worse, it’s like the thunder already puts me back into the sandbox and the lightning just  _ looks _ like explosions flashing and it’s…” A deep, shuddering breath. “It’s not good.”

Riley smiled softly, rubbing her hand up and down his arm. “Well you aren’t back there, you and Jack both got out, you got home. And I don’t believe there’s a bomb out there you couldn’t deal with.” She looked out the window. The rain was significantly less; it seemed like the storm had almost rained itself out. “You think you’d be okay to go back to sleep? It’s still pretty late, and we’ve got work tomorrow.”

Mac looked at his bedside clock (the replacement for the one he’d taken apart last Monday) and immediately stammered out more apologies for waking Riley up and keeping her awake so late.

“Mac. Mac! It’s not a problem, I told you. I’ve stayed up later playing Call of Duty, and that isn’t even anything important. Helping you out? You know that's important to me.” Riley smiled, hopping off Mac’s bed and making her way to the door.

“Hey Riles?”

She turned to see a sheepish and sleepy-looking Mac.

“Thanks,” he said, with a soft smile.

_ So much, in just one word _ , she thought as she returned his smile.

“Anytime, Mac.” 


	19. Day 19: Alt 4 (stitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm going with Alt 4 today, because I really don't think I can write "grief, survivor's guilt, mourning" very well. I’m bad with grief. I’ve never been able to express it very well. So I don't think I'll be able to write it well. Love having a brain :/ 
> 
> So I’d rather not write about that. I’ll write about stitches, those are fun :)  
> Also, after everything I've put these poor guys through this month, I thought we could use some fluff. 
> 
> (I gave a name to the doctor who's been patching them up, too. I figured since they keep ending up in medical, I need to crack down on consistency. Her name is Dr. Deanna Reiss

Mac hated being drugged, even if it was in a medical setting. If it was at all possible, he preferred localised numbing. But for some reason, it just wasn’t working this time. Logically, he knew that the numbing agent wasn’t working because it all leaked out the gaping gash in his hand. But that didn’t make the stitches hurt any less. He needed four. That was nothing to him, he’d both gotten and given several more stitches at a time. But four stitches, no numbing, in a part of his hand full of nerves, was not fun.

He could deal with pain. He could box it up and lock it away in his head; think about something else. But “something else” was just as bad when he thought of the very real possibilities of permanent nerve damage. That, and remembering that he’d almost sliced his thumb off. 

All this because of a pan of brownies. 

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault but Mac’s, though he could have blamed Jack for not greasing the pan before baking them. Or maybe Bozer, because Mac had offered to cut him one. But really, the only one at fault was himself. He should have known better than to try and use a serrated steak knife to chip out a brownie that had baked hard to the pan. Not his brightest moment.

He owned spatulas. He owned butterknives. What had possessed him to use a serrated knife?

Long story short, his right hand had slipped, and Mac nearly cut his left thumb off. He hadn’t felt any pain at all until he swore and ran the wound under tap water. Again, not his brightest moment. It didn’t bleed a whole lot, either. He had slapped some gauze on it, and held it tight while Jack drove him to Phoenix, giving him shit the whole way there.

At least Dr. Reiss had some sympathy. Apparently kitchen accidents were a common occurrence in her house: she said she had almost blinded her mother once just by throwing an arm out. She did Mac’s stitches as quickly and well as she always did. Reiss had gotten good at patching Mac up over the years, though, admittedly, this was nothing even remotely close to some of the worst things she’d had to stitch up on him.

She tied off the last stitch, and Mac exhaled. “I’m sorry the lidocaine didn’t take, Mac, but you’re good.” As she put new gauze around the wound, she said “You might have very minor nerve damage. You’ll still have full use of your whole hand, don’t worry,” she added as he tensed up. “Very minor. The area right around the wound might be numb or tingly to the touch. That’s all.”

Deanna handed Jack a box of extra large bandaids. “You should air the stitches out periodically, but for the most part, a simple bandage will do. Try not to do too much with that hand. In two weeks, you can come by and get those taken out.” She smiled. “You know the drill.”

And back home they drove, with Jack still giving Mac endless shit for “usING A SERRATED KNIFE Mac, what the hell?? Dude! There were a million better options!”

“I know, I know!” Mac cut in when Jack finally took a breath. “I’m fully aware of that. I wasn’t thinking, and grabbed the first thing at hand.”

Jack looked at Mac as they pulled back into Mac’s driveway. “The first thing at…  _ hand _ ??”

“Oh shut up,” he grumbled as Jack started laughing. He just knew that Jack was going to be having a lot of fun for the next two weeks.

—————

“Ah, ah, ah, Mac you know you’re not allowed in there anymore,” Bozer called from the couch as Mac tried to get himself a glass of water from the kitchen. Bozer had not let him into his own kitchen for three days now. 

Mac sighed. “Listen, I’m just going to get a drink. I’m only touching the glasses and the fridge. Well, and the cupboard door handle, but that’s it. Get up and watch if you want.” 

The first time, the day after Mac had gotten his stitches, he had gone into the kitchen to sneak a brownie (he hadn’t even had one earlier, before he had cut himself). He was using a spatula, thank you very much, but Bozer came in and practically shouted at him, ordering him out of the kitchen until further notice. And further notice hadn’t been posted yet. Mac was banned from his kitchen. 

He knew Bozer was just being overly cautious. But hearing him talk, you’d think that appliances spontaneously exploded the second Mac walked into the vicinity (which had only happened one time, and it hadn’t been Mac’s fault). Mac was getting a little tired of being treated like some kind of disaster time-bomb. He had been keeping his hand still for days, which sucked but appeased his anxious teammates. 

Bozer got off the couch, supervised Mac getting water, and then promptly shooed Mac away again. “You got your water, now get out. Out, before you break the glass and cut up your other hand. Or worse, before you make the oven blow up or something, and turn my beautiful pumpkin muffins to charcoal.”

That caught Mac’s attention. “Pumpkin muffins?” he asked expectantly. He loved the Bozer family pumpkin muffin recipe: they were usually more chocolate chips than pumpkin, and they were almost certainly heaven-sent. Bozer’s mom had made them every year, and Bozer had continued the tradition.

“Yes, pumpkin muffins,” Bozer muttered, exasperated. “And if, IF you behave yourself and stay out of the damn kitchen, you can have some. In half an hour when they’re ready.”

Half an hour of “behaving himself” sounded awful, but hey, muffins were muffins.

—————

The extra large bandages didn’t really stay put very well. It was probably the location of the wound: right down at the base of his hand beneath his thumb. Riley had suggested a brace to immobilise his hand, but Mac hated having any part of him immobilised, so he opted for a glove instead. 

He hated gloves too. The amount of things Mac needed his hands for, he didn’t have time for his fingers to be oversized, fuzzy and clumsy. Last Christmas, Jack had gotten him a pair of grey, fingerless gloves, though, and those weren’t so bad. So Mac put one on over the bandage, to hold it in place throughout the day. He only put on the left one. No reason to have both his hands impaired.

What Mac failed to account for was Jack’s ability to poke fun at just about anything.

“Hey there, hoss, you channeling MJ?” he asked as he strode into the room. It was five days after the stitches. 

Riley looked up from her computer, confused. “MJ? Like, Spiderman MJ?”

“Nah,” Jack said, pointing to Mac’s gloved hand. “Like MJ MJ. Don’t look at me like that, I ain’t crazy.” He then proceeded to moonwalk, dispelling every doubt they all had as to whether or not he was crazy. “Michael Jackson, you lame millennials. Gah, why am I the only one here who knows pop culture? He wore one glove for a long time, it kinda became a thing.”

“‘A thing,’ like that leather cuff you wear?” Mac asked, trying to direct attention off of his mismatched hands. But Jack just moonwalked over, and plonked down next to Mac on the couch. 

“Don’t you try and get out of it, Mac-ael Jackson.” Bozer snorted into his coffee. Mac groaned. He was now not only going to have to endure being made fun of for his culinary ineptitude, but also was going to have to listen to Jack and Bozer sing. 

And sing they did. They got through the entirety of  _ Thriller _ and  _ Billie Jean _ before Riley shooed them away. She and Mac had actually been doing work when Jack had interrupted. And Mac was grateful for her insistence. Jack had been modifying lyrics: “People always told me, be careful what you do, don’t go around stabbing your damn hand,” and “Thriller (“thriller!” Bozer had squawked in), thriller night, and no one’s gonna save you from a Mac who’s got a knife—”

“Alright, alright, enough you two! Go down to the karaoke bar if you’re gonna butcher Michael Jackon.”

“Ah ah, no, Ri, it’s Mac-ael Jackson.” And Jack moonwalked out of there. Poorly.

—————

As if Jack’s singing and Bozer’s mother henning hadn’t been enough, he couldn’t go on missions, because Matty had grounded him. Literally. She had straight up said “You’re grounded, young man,” with a small smile when she heard what had happened. 

Mac was allowed to work in the lab, provided someone else was with him to make sure he didn’t get hurt worse. Being babysat was not Mac’s idea of a good time. And because most of his team went out on a short job without him, anyone available for babysitting duty would be someone he didn’t know, or he’d inconvenience Riley while she was trying to work.  _ No thanks. _

So Mac stayed home. And he felt like a grounded kid. James didn’t usually ground him, not explicitly. Little Angus wasn’t allowed to go outside and play until he finished his work, but the word “grounded” never came up. Harry had grounded him once or twice, when Mac had been a teenager. He hadn’t been a terribly rebellious kid, but he pushed at some rules that he thought needed pushing at, and he was grounded accordingly.

And it felt an awful lot like this. Mac was bored out of his mind. He couldn’t really use his hand, which meant he couldn’t do a whole lot in the way of tinkering. He could go into the kitchen, however. Bozer was out in the field with Jack. Mac could snatch all the leftover muffins he wanted. And get a drink without being watched like a toddler. 

_ And you know what? It’s been a little more than a week. I can do some work on my bike. The cut’s almost healed. _

And so, when Riley came over after whatever hacking project she had been working on, she found Mac, lying frustrated on his back beneath his bike. His left hand had never been as dextrous as his right, but now it was even less so, from both the glove and the mild-but-present pain. He swore as he dropped a wrench onto his chest.

Riley crouched down beside him and picked it up. “You supposed to be doing that, Mac?” she asked, and it made Mac jump, almost hitting his head against the wheel of the bike. He hadn’t heard her come in.

“Um. No. Not really,” he admitted. “But I was going nuts, Riles. I haven’t been able to do anything for more than a week now.” Mac hated not having a project to work on, something to keep his brain and hands busy. Having things to do and not being able to do them was worse. 

To his surprise, Riley didn’t reprimand him, or tell him to stop. She just took his left hand, looked at the cut, and nodded. “It looks like you aren’t doing any harm to it by working. Need…”  _ It’s too good to pass up. _ “Need a hand?”

Mac scowled at her Jack-like joke, but he had to admit, he couldn’t get the bolt unscrewed by himself, with only one and a half hands. So she became an extra set of hands for him, and they worked on his bike until Riley decided that she felt like not-cooking, and Chinese food. She dared Mac to try to use chopsticks left-handed. It was something he could do with a surprising degree of success under normal circumstances, but that night he dropped them twice before he went back to using his right hand.

“Man, I’m gonna be glad when I can have these stitches out,” he said. “It’s a pain in the ass to not be able to use my hand.”

Riley chuckled. “Maybe don’t try and cut your thumb off, then, Mac.”

That just landed her a rant about “First of all, with the angle the knife was at and where my hand was, there was  _ no way _ I could have actually cut my thumb off. Second of all…..”

—————

Two weeks to the day, and Mac was waiting not-so-patiently for Deanna Reese to call him back to get his stitches pulled out. 

Taking stitches out was a strange experience. The part of the material inside the body dissolves, leaving only the knotted bits outside. And those were what had pulled his skin back together after being opened up. Dr Reiss had been right: there was a bit of nerve damage, but it only manifested in a tingly numbness if he touched the affected area. He’d never like stitches, but they were certainly fascinating. He hadn’t needed to wait too long, and taking the stitches out had taken no time at all. And now that he was free of the stitches and the glove and the teasing, he drove home with the windows rolled down in his maroon Jeep, humming along to the radio. Until he realised it was a Michael Jackson song, that was… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based on a true story. Yours truly was an idiot, and chipped brownies out of a pan with a serrated knife. The team's reactions are a mix of reactions from my friends (lookin' at you, fancyf1amingozz) and family when it happened to me :)


	20. Day 20: Not in Kansas anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who doesn't love a good sandbox fic?

Deep in the central highlands of Afghanistan, Sergeant Dalton and Specialist MacGyver had just succeeded in pissing off a terrorist cell. MacGyver had disarmed the bomb they planted, Jack had shot a couple of guys, and now they were both booking it for the Humvee.

“Think you pissed them off good, BurgerTime!” Jack shouted, firing rapidly, and wishing he wasn’t the only one shooting. He’d been MacGyver’s Overwatch for a few months now: long enough to know that unless he had absolutely no other choice, the younger man would leave his weapon holstered. It was one of the many mild annoyances that all added up to make a scrawny, five-foot-ten-sized pain in Jack’s ass.

The kid fidgeted. With  _ everything _ . Radios, paperclips, the buckles on his BDU, anything he could get his hands on. It drove Jack crazy. MacGyver also had a tendency to technobabble, going on and on about whatever chemicals he was playing with, or specs about the bomb he was taking forever to defuse. Facts that Jack neither wanted to know nor understood. It made Jack feel dumb, the way the kid talked sometimes. And now, his bomb-nerd hadn’t even drawn his gun to return fire.

Fortunately, MacGyver was too out of breath to come up with a smartass response, which was good. For him. There were definitely days when Jack remembered fondly the hits he’d given the kid during their short fight.

MacGyver scrambled into the passenger seat of the Humvee, and with a few parting shots, Jack wrenched open the driver-side door and threw himself behind the wheel, flooring it.

It was a bumpy ride out. Radio was spotty up in the Highlands, and their backup was several miles out. They had to lose the trucks behind them, and fast. Jack drove like a madman, skidding through sharp turns and jouncing over the rocky terrain. He just could not shake their pursuit.  _ Time to do something bold, then _ .

“Hang on, Carl’s Junior, it’s going to get real bumpy real fast.”

Jack saw MacGyver’s hand fly up to the “oh shit” handle, but after that he had to return his eyes to the road. Though a loose, crumbly mountainside hardly counted as a road. They were going down full-tilt, and Jack was counting his lucky stars that they didn’t flip. It had looked like a very real possibility for a few seconds.

Safely at the bottom of the mountainside — safe here a relative word, given that they were now even further from backup and had only just barely evaded their pursuit — Jack let out a whoop of pure adrenaline. “Always wanted to do a stunt like that,” he said out loud without thinking. MacGyver chuckled, though it sounded more like a huff of panicked air releasing.

“I bet it did look pretty cool. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not do it again.” It was Jack’s turn to chuckle, also not hasty to repeat his outstanding performance.

Moments like this — without open hostility between Overwatch and EOD — were rare, but actually somewhat pleasant. Jack often found himself thinking that the kid was alright, most of the time. Annoying, but alright. MacGyver was a nice, friendly guy. A little reserved; he didn’t talk about home a whole lot. But he listened and remembered things others told him. He’d direct conversation away from himself by talking with some of the other guys, because he remembered that Norton’s daughter’s birthday was coming up, and that Edwards was excited about Monday’s basketball game.

Basically, if Carl’s Junior didn’t drive Jack crazy on an almost-daily basis (and probably vice versa, because Jack wouldn’t deny that he liked getting on the kid’s nerves too, as payback) they might actually get along fine.

Jack's musing was cut short as MacGyver called out “Jack! Look out!”

Jack turned his eyes front, just in time to see a rocket coming right for them. He tried to swerve the Humvee, but didn’t have time. He felt the Humvee shake and roll, heard MacGyver yelling, and suddenly there was a massive pain in his abdomen. But Jack didn’t have time to even yell in pain, before his head connected with metal, and the bright day turned black.

—————

Mac blinked his eyes open, wincing at the brightness and a headache.  _ What happened? _ His ears were ringing. He could smell blood and burning. 

“Jack?”

Jack didn’t answer. Mac didn’t even hear his Overwatch move. When he turned his neck to look (which hurt), he gasped.

Jack was slumped limp in the driver’s seat. Blood streamed down his head from under his helmet. But what caught Mac’s attention was a fair-sized chunk of Humvee sticking out of Jack’s abdomen, staining his BDU with blood.

Mac fumbled with his seatbelt. He remembered having a rocket launched at the Humvee, he remembered Jack cursing and swerving, and he remembered flipping. Miraculously, the Humvee had landed upright, but Mac knew that the hostiles who had fired upon them could very well still be nearby. He had to get himself and Jack out.

Easier said than done. Mac scanned the area for hostiles before hopping out of the battered, smoking Humvee.  _ That’s not good. Smoking is not good. _ He had to act fast before the vehicle blew up. He scrabbled around in the backseat, reaching for the first aid kit, and crossed to Jack’s door. Getting Jack unbuckled was the easy part. Getting him out of the car was harder. Luckily, nothing had pinned him; he was just heavier than Mac, and bleeding profusely.

It took quite some doing to lug Jack’s unresponsive body under a rock outcropping. He fumbled with his radio in one hand, unfastening Jack’s BDU top with the other.

“This is Snakebite One One, does anyone copy?”

A voice crackled on the other end. “Snakebite, this is Hawkins, what the hell happened out there?”

Mac breathed a heavy sigh of relief that someone had heard him. “Our vehicle got hit by an RPG. Dalton’s hurt, unresponsive but alive. We need medevac and some cover fire.”

“Copy that, MacGyver. What’s your position?”

“Uh…” Mac actually had no idea what they were. “We drove down the south side of the Central Highlands before we got blown up. But the Humvee is on fire, so you should be able to see it. I’ve moved us to an outcropping nearby for some cover.”

Hawkins didn’t respond for a moment, but then patched through with “Copy. We’ve got medevac and backup headed your way. Might be a bit, though, we’ve got a few hostiles headed our way. Give us twenty minutes. Over.”

Mac looked down at Jack’s bloodstained uniform. Twenty minutes might be too long, unless he could start to patch Jack up. Between Jack’s tendency to run headlong into danger, and Mac’s over-preparedness, their first aid kid was one of the most well-stocked in the whole unit. Mac just hoped it would be enough to help.

First things first, the large chunk of shrapnel needed to come out of Jack’s abdomen. It wasn’t in a position to have punctured anything vital, but even so, Mac couldn’t do anything for Jack with it still in him. So, grimacing at the pain he knew this would cause his grouchy Overwatch, Mac dislodged the metal.

Jack came to with a choked yell, and he swung at Mac. He couldn’t tell if Jack recognized him or not; honestly, Jack would probably be just as hostile either way. They hadn’t exactly hit it off well, and their animosity only grew as they sniped at each other for months.

“Jack! It’s me, it’s MacGyver. Hold still, you’ll hurt yourself more.”

Jack went still with a groan, holding a hand to his now freely-bleeding wound. “What happened?”

“An RPG hit us. The Humvee is on fire, so I moved us here. You had a hunk of steel in you. You need stitches.”

Jack laughed. It sounded painful and derisive. “Yeah, like I’m gonna let you stick me full of holes. No thanks, BurgerTime. I think I’ll wait for people a bit more trained. Who ain’t still teenagers.”

Mac ignored the jab at his youth. Yeah, he was the youngest guy on base. But he wasn’t a teenager, he wasn’t naïve, and he was far from stupid. He could do his job, and do it well. And he could stitch Jack up well enough to buy him a bit more time.

“I’ve radioed for medevac already, but it’ll be a while. We’re pretty far away. If I don’t at least do some preliminary stitching, you’ll bleed out before they can get here.” He met Jack’s distrustful glare. “I know you don’t like me, but your options are kind of limited right now.”

To emphasize his words, the Humvee exploded in the distance, startling them both. 

Jack let out a deep breath. “Fine.”

That was all the permission Mac was likely to get, so he took it, and sterilized the suture needle.

“Hey, Carl’s Junior?” Mac grunted at the irritating nickname, looking to Jack. “Unless there’s a whole lot of whiskey in that first aid kit... you’ll have to hold me down.”

Mac hesitated, but nodded, contemplating how best to keep Jack still. He could straddle him, but that would leave Jack’s hands free to shove him off.

Mac settled for kneeling on Jack: one knee on his chest, the other over his thighs. With his left hand, he pinned both of Jack’s hands to his chest. “Ready?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Just get it over with, BurgerTime.”

So Mac did. He stitched his partner up as fast as he could, while still keeping the stitches neat.

Jack was not a good patient. The first few stitches merited gasps and twitching. But once Mac got further, Jack yelled and thrashed, trying to buck Mac off of him, yelling profanities and insults. If it had been anyone else, Mac would’ve known that all the insults were born of the pain. With Jack, he had no way to be sure he didn’t mean what he was saying. Mac tried not to let the words get to him, and focused on the needle in his hand.

It was surprising and somewhat frightening to Mac how easily he could hold Jack down. While no longer a scrawny MIT nerd — the army beefed him up a bit during basic training — he was certainly no match in strength for Dalton. The only reason Mac had won their first fight was because he was faster, not stronger (not that he’d admit it).

But here he was, pinning Dalton again, under very different circumstances. The shouts had stopped, turning into pained gasps. Mac hoped Jack would just pass out. It would be easier.

“God, stop, stop!” Jack cried out suddenly, as Mac started another suture.

“I can’t stop, Jack. I’m almost done, promise.”

Jack struggled briefly. “Stop, kid, it... it hurts... please stop.”

Mac was shocked. On so many levels, what Jack had said was out of character. Jack Dalton never begged for anything. Mac had seen him mouth off in the face of a beating on multiple occasions. He wasn’t any stranger to pain, and could take it like a champ (Mac would never tell him, but he admired that). And the lack of hostility toward him… Jack never called him anything but “MacGyver,” or stupid jokes about his first name.  _ He must really be out of it _ .

If Mac was truly honest with himself, his Overwatch was a good person. The guys on base respected him and liked him, and he got along well with just about everyone except Mac. Which Mac supposed may have been his fault, for fiddling with his gear, but he was only trying to help, and was too stubborn after to apologize.

The truth was, he and Jack worked well together, and Mac couldn’t help but think that maybe if he hadn’t gotten them off on the wrong foot, they might get along a bit better.

“I’m almost done, Jack, almost there.” He tied off the last stitch, and shifted his weight back, off of Jack, who groaned.

It was another few minutes until their medevac arrived, and Jack was almost completely out of it. Mac had to stop him twice from picking at his stitches, and he had a fever. That was probably where the lack of characteristic bickering came from, but it also meant Mac hadn’t been fast enough with his first aid to prevent infection.

They lifted them out in a chopper (which Mac did not enjoy), and got the battered pair back to base.

Nearly a full day later, Mac went in to check on his Overwatch. Jack’s infection was under wraps, his fever was down, and his wounds were properly stitched and bandaged. Now, Jack was sitting up, picking at the scratchy-looking blanket. He looked up as Mac entered the room, and Mac instantly felt strange. Like he shouldn’t be there, like he wasn’t wanted.

But he was surprised yet again, when Jack nodded and said “Hey, kid.”

Mac smiled slightly. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

Jack sighed. “Better. Least I’m not babbling like an idiot anymore.”

Mac smirked and raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t help it, even though he knew Jack probably wouldn’t appreciate it. But the only response he got was a “shut it, smartass” that had no bite to it.

“They tell me I’d be dead if you hadn’t stitched me up back there. Normally, I’d be pissed that you didn’t listen to me, but it turns out you were right, this time around.” Jack smiled wryly. “So thanks.”

“It’s been known to happen,” Mac muttered, but also with no bite to it. “It was nothing.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Now, I may still be a bit fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall the last time you pinned me down, you had to work awful hard for it. And I hadn’t been freaking out, then. But you pinned me good and proper this time, and did what needed to be done to save my life. That ain’t nothing.”

Mac didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t say anything.

Jack continued hesitantly. “And… I’m sorry. I remember saying a lot of things back there that I didn’t mean. Though in my defense, it hurt like a bitch. So how ‘bout this: I don’t get any more shrapnel in me, we go back to me saving your ass while you save all our asses, yeah?” He held out a fist for Mac to bump. “Get us back to the natural order of things.”

Mac chuckled.  _ The natural order of things? _ But it was starting to feel natural for Jack to be watching his back. And Mac found he liked Jack a lot better when they were being civil to each other. 

“Deal,” Mac said, bumping his fist to Jack’s.


	21. Day 21: I don't feel so well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hypothermia!  
> I know nothing about the region I dropped our boys in, so if anyone reading this is from Prospect Creek, Alaska, I'm sorry in advance ;)

Mac wasn’t usually one for coarse language, though if Jack had been conscious, he would have been saying it was cold as balls. But Jack wasn’t conscious, and therefore said nothing.

It was very cold. They were lost in Alaska, near Prospect Creek. They had been sent to investigate a reported attack on the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, likely committed by a rival oil company. The evidence had been inconclusive ( _ of course. Why can’t the BadGuys just sign their names sometimes? _ ) so security had been heightened, and Mac and Jack were good to go home.

They drove from the pipeline back to the town. But the thing about the tiny, all-but-empty town of Prospect Creek, was that it didn’t have an airport, so Mac and Jack had to hike a little ways to their exfil. Which would have been fine, if they hadn’t gotten lost, and if Jack hadn’t fallen through ice into Prospect Creek itself. 

Now, they had missed their exfil, the extreme cold was messing with their phones (well, Mac’s phone. Jack’s phone hadn’t enjoyed the dip in the frigid water any more than Jack had), and the shelter Mac had built around where Jack had collapsed was hardly any protection from the cold. He was currently trying to build a fire. Mac was 90% sure that there were bears living in the woods.

And it was getting dark.

—————

_ “Hoss, I think you’re walking us ‘round in circles.” _

_ Mac looked around. Yeah, the snow-coated forest looked the same as all the rest of the snow-coated forest they’d been trudging through, but he knew they hadn’t been going in circles. Mac had been keeping the afternoon sun behind them and to their left, because the airport was three miles northeast of the tiny town. If anything, they might have been veering too far north, which would be almost as bad. Getting stuck out in the coldest place in the United States was not his idea of fun. _

_ But, assuming they were still going the right way, they would make their exfil. Barely. So they continued to trudge through the woods, in temperatures well below what was comfortable.  _

_ Jack, for all he loved to give inaccurate (and often crude) measurements of temperature like “cold as balls” or “hot as fuck,” could actually guess the temperature around him quite accurately. He usually had a five-degree margin of error. Which meant that currently, with Jack’s guess being fifteen degrees, that it was anywhere from ten to twenty degrees outside. Far from ideal. _

_ As they kept moving, and the sun sank lower, they came across the namesake of the town. Prospect Creek was a fairly thin, winding affair, currently iced over. They needed to cross.  _

_ Mac went first, despite Jack’s protests. But the spring ice held Mac’s weight, and he carefully walked across to the east bank. Jack followed, stepping gingerly, and wincing at the sound of his crunching footfalls. _

_ Until suddenly, instead of the crunch of boots on snow, there had been a loud crack that sent fear shooting through Mac’s veins. Jack fell through with a yelp. Mac was able to pull him out of the frigid water quickly, because Jack had latched onto the ice with a death-grip that sliced his hands open. It saved his life. The creek was deep, with a fast current beneath the ice. If Jack hadn’t gotten ahold of the ice he fell through, there would have been nothing Mac could have thought up or built to save him. _

_ Lugging a sopping wet Jack off of the still-shifting ice and onto solid ground was a chore for both of them, Mac more than Jack. The cold had sent Jack into shock very rapidly. Mac had tried to keep him talking and moving, but after walking about thirty feet, Jack had simply collapsed, and Mac couldn’t rouse him. _

—————

The fire flickered cheerily at Mac. Normally, he liked watching fire. He liked how bright it was, how lively. Sometimes he would tear up strips of paper and set them in his firepit to watch them curl and burn as the flames consumed them. But this time, the cheer of the small fire was a bit dampened by his predicament. 

Jack still hadn’t woken. Mac had been torn between taking off Jack’s soaked clothes and leaving them on. It was so cold, he didn’t think it would make much of a difference if Jack had them on or not, even if they were wet. He had settled for taking off Jack’s bulky outer coat, and replacing it with his own. Jack’s coat, he hung on a low-hanging branch over the fire to dry out. 

Mac really hated being cold. A chilly day in Los Angeles was 60 or 70 degrees. It rarely dropped below 50. But as night fell in subarctic Alaska, temperatures were reaching pretty close to zero, with no intention of warming until the sun rose.

If he had to be honest, he wasn’t sure they would survive to see it.

They had missed their exfil, so Phoenix would be looking for them, but the forest between the airport and Dalton Highway (which Jack had loved) was vast. The small amount of light and smoke his fire made would probably not be enough to be seen. There was also wildlife to contend with, and Jack’s rapidly-onsetting hypothermia. Hell, Mac wasn’t sure he wasn’t developing hypothermia himself.

But he had done all he could. He had gotten them in a makeshift shelter, built a fire. All that was left to do was bunker down. Mac got Jack’s still-damp outer coat down, and held it for a moment, considering.

Jack needed all the warmth he could get to stay alive. That meant cuddling. It was hardly the first time the pair of them had been in a cuddle-or-die spot, and they were long past the point where anything was awkward. Hell, they had needed to share a bed on multiple occasions, which had gone just as well as might have been expected: Mac slept sprawled like a starfish, and Jack was a snuggler. But Mac had no qualms with doing what he needed to do to (hopefully) keep Jack alive until morning. And then… Mac didn’t let himself think that far ahead.

_ How best to do this? _ he thought. On the one hand, chest-to-chest was supposed to be better for hypothermia, but on the other hand, spooning was better for bunkering down for the long haul. They had both of those problems on hand.

Mac settled on spooning. He unzipped the jacket Jack was wearing, and gently maneuvered Jack so he was laying on top of it instead of on the snowy earth, facing the fire. Mac then lay down beside him, tucking Jack tight against his chest. The skin on Jack’s neck, the only exposed skin Mac could reach besides his face, was frigid. Mac rubbed his gloved hand up and down Jack’s arms and over his chest, trying to get some warm blood flowing. He covered them both with the second coat. And then, knowing he’d done all he could and hoping it was enough, Mac buried his face in the back of Jack’s neck and drifted off to sleep.

—————

The team sent to retrieve MacGyver and Dalton found a smoldering fire, and two unresponsive, dangerously hypothermic bodies. Huddling for warmth may have saved their lives, but it couldn’t have generated enough heat to keep them anywhere near conscious.

They were airlifted out, and immediately hospitalised. They were beyond lucky that frostbite had not been so severe as to require amputations, though it would likely be a while before either of them could use their hands and feet successfully. ‘Beyond lucky’ was a good way to describe them, actually, especially considering the fact that, by all appearances, Dalton had fallen into water. 

The Phoenix agents slept for two days while their bodies slowly regulated their temperatures back to normal, and their frostbitten extremities recovered. Waking up was still painful for both of them, though. The prickly pins-and-needles feeling of numb flesh warming was not pleasant. But they were alive, and lucky to be so. And they knew it.


	22. Day 22: Do these tacos taste funny to you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A break from Mac and Jack whump, Bozer gets drugged.
> 
> I feel like an apology is necessary, since this was written very late at night and therefore not my best work. I also only did minimal research into the specific drug. Oh well :)

As far as Mac knew, Bozer had never gotten high. He just wasn’t the type, had never been. Mac himself had only gotten high once, and it had been an extracurricular chemistry accident. And hospitalisations didn’t count either. 

But doping up on drugs was totally different from being drugged on a mission. That had happened to Mac more times than he’d like to count. It had never happened to Bozer, Mac had always made sure of it. Sort of like the way Jack tried to protect Mac when they got captured together, Mac did the same for Bozer. He pissed off captors intentionally to draw heat onto himself and off of his brother. It usually worked. 

Not this time.

And now, Bozer’s eyes were wide and staring blankly as Mac tried to talk to him. Their dingy cell wasn’t very well-lit, but Mac could see well enough to know that Bozer was sweating and his pupils had dilated to near pinpricks. 

“Hey man, Boze. Can you hear me?” Bozer didn’t respond right away, and Mac wished his hands weren’t bound so he could touch him, ground him a little.

“Mac?” His voice was small, just a little shaky.

“Yeah, Boze?”

“What… What’d they give me?”

“Uh.” Mac took some time to sweep another look over Bozer. “Judging from the size of your pupils, the amount you’re sweating, and the fact that these guys wanted information, I’d say probably scopolamine. It’s use as an interrogative drug was stopped in the US because of the negative side effects, but—”

“We ain’t in the US,” Bozer muttered. 

“No,” Mac had to agree. “We aren’t.”  _ This is gonna be a rough day or two. _

Actually, their stint in captivity was much briefer than Man anticipated. It was barely two hours after Bozer had been injected that rescue came for them in the form of guns-a-blazin’ Jack Dalton. But those had been some long two hours for Mac. 

Apparently, Bozer was in the small percentage of people who hallucinated when exposed to scopolamine. Mac had told him the truth, that it had stopped being used as an interrogative drug in the States, but he hadn’t told him why. Common side effects were generally mild, things like a dry mouth and a slightly elevated heart rate, but the more severe side effects were… well, severe. It couldn’t be used without a guarantee of the victim’s safety. 

So Bozer had been subjected to hallucinations, tricks from his own head. And Mac hadn’t been able to do anything for him but try and talk. He had to tell Bozer that no, his mother wasn’t here, no, Jack hadn’t come yet (he wished he would come soon). He tried to keep Bozer from spiralling deep into the memories of his brother’s death, but he couldn’t help a few tears for his distraught best friend.

Finally, the cavalry came for them. Mac had rarely been so relieved to see Jack in all his life. Having to watch Bozer suffer attacks from his own mind, and not being able to do anything worthwhile to help, had been tearing Mac up inside. 

“Well how do you think I feel, hoss, every time this happens to you?” Jack said softly, as he and Mac took Bozer’s weight between them to stagger to exfil. Mac was ignoring the bruised ribs he’d gotten from the initial beating. “Every time, I try to take as much as I can, because I’d rather it be me than you. Not because I enjoy taking a beating, but because I can’t stand to see you hurt.”

Bozer had fought them weakly as they lifted him up, murmuring mild threats and pleas. And now that Mac could actually touch him to take a pulse, he found that it was indeed elevated quite a bit. They had given Bozer a higher dose than was strictly necessary. His skin was hot to the touch.

Getting him onto the plane was interesting. Bozer had really only been staggering along before, supported by Mac and Jack, but he couldn’t lift his legs to go up the stairs onto the jet. Jack had simply taken Bozer out of Mac’s hold, and lifted him. Jack always made picking up his kids look easy, even though Mac knew it couldn’t have been: he and Bozer each probably only weighed twenty pounds or so less than Jack himself.

Bozer’s eyes were sliding closed as Jack gently lowered him onto the couch. “That’s it, Bozer, sleep it off. We’ll be home in a few hours. You’re safe here.”

He muttered something neither Jack nor Mac could make out, and his brown eyes closed. His body didn’t relax, but they’d take what they could get.

The majority of the plane ride was uneventful. Jack helped Mac bind up his ribs and clean up the blood from his split lip, and Mac filled Jack in on the intel his captor had inadvertently shared. It wasn’t until about half an hour out from LA that Bozer shifted in his sleep, seeming to wake up. Mac was at his side in an instant.

“Hey, Boze, how’re you feeling?”

Bozer shook his head weakly. “Wh’r ‘re we?” he slurred, slowly becoming more agitated. Mac held his best friend by the shoulders. 

“We’re on the jet, going home. Well, you’ll have to stay in medical for a bit, to make sure you’re alright. But we’re safe.” For all Mac tried to make his words soothing, Bozer’s heart rate skyrocketed and he seemed centimeters away from a panic attack. And suddenly, Bozer began to seize under Mac’s hands.

Jack appeared beside Mac, telling him to let go of Bozer, to let the seizure run its course. And Mac knew Jack was right, he knew he had to let go or he risked hurting Bozer further. But everything in him screamed that he had to hold him as he shook and gasped horribly.

They rode out the first seizure, and the rapidly-following second one, before the plane landed. A stretcher was waiting out on the tarmac for them, and they whisked Bozer away faster than Mac and Jack could follow. When they caught up, Bozer was hooked up to heart monitors, and they were trying to get an IV started in his left wrist.

Before the doctors could get the IV placed, Bozer flatlined, and Mac felt his own heart drop into his shoes. Jack caught him as his knees buckled, and led him to a chair.

Mac was so shaky and pale that Jack would have thought he had been the one drugged, if it hadn’t been for the flurry of activity behind him around Bozer’s hospital bed. Mac kept murmuring “no, no, no,” seemingly without realising it, rocking back and forth in Jack’s hold. 

“Hey, hey, Mac, he’s gonna… he’s gonna be okay.” Jack prayed his words would prove true. He cared about Bozer almost as much as Mac at this point. “He’s strong, he’s already survived so much. Learned from the best. He’ll pull through.”

“He’s got to,” Mac gasped, and flinched violently at the loud pulse of the defibrillator, as if it had thrummed into his own chest. “He… he has to be okay…”

Jack rubbed Mac’s back with his knuckles, needing the assurance of touch every bit as much as Mac did. It took too damn long, but Bozer was stabilised and sedated. Jack slowly began to breathe deeper, and the tremors worked their way out of Mac’s normally steady hands.

Mac swallowed, looking like it hurt, and stared at Bozer’s still, sleeping form. “Is this how it feels? Every time?”

“Wish I could say it gets easier, Mac, but it honestly doesn’t. It hurt just the same the first time as now, watching you guys hurting.”

They fell silent, just listening to the steady beeping of all the monitors Bozer was hooked up to. Some were for blood pressure, some for heart rate, some for breathing. Mac could probably have said better what each of them was for, and how they all worked, but for now, the partners just sat in silence, content to watch the monitors that told them that Bozer was alive.

Coming off of any drug wasn’t very fun, as the two trained agents knew well. There wasn’t a whole lot either of them could do for Bozer as his fever rose and then broke, and they held his hand through the nightmares and drawn-out shudders, but that was it. But they both resolved to be there for Bozer when he finally woke, and Riley joined them as soon as she could. No way would they let Bozer wake up alone. No, when he woke up, he would be surrounded by the smiles and love of his family, just like he always did and would always do for any of them.


	23. Day 23: What's a whumpee gotta do to get some sleep around here?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's very late. I'm like three days behind. Sorry.
> 
> Ngl, I had a lot of fun writing and researching this :)

**Three hours since their ill-fated raid on yet another European terrorist organization, by Mac’s watch**

The only thing he could feel immediately was his throbbing head. As awareness seeped back into his body, Mac’s senses told him he was in a cold room, lying uncomfortably on a hard floor, and it smelled vaguely like mold.

His head seemed to be the only hurt part of him, aside from general stiffness. He slowly peeled his eyes open. Vertigo hit instantly, even though he hadn’t moved.

_ When will people learn I can only be hit on the head so many times before my brain just stops working? _

He slowly sat up, fighting past nausea, and when he was successful, he used the whitewashed wall to help him stagger to his feet. The room spun, but if he focused hard enough, he could make it stop.

Just as Mac was looking around to see what he could use to bust himself free, the metal door slammed open. A heavyset man walked in, and Mac recognized his face from their mission briefing: Svelte Dulik. Dealer in arms and mercenary fighters, with no allegiances but money, and allegedly a sick sense of humor. 

_ Great. _

“So you are awake,” Dulik said in a heavy Slavic accent. “A pity. You might perhaps have liked to sleep longer.”

A new man, one Mac could only describe as a goon, shuffled in, holding a pair of cuffs.

Mac fought the two men, but Dulik was stronger than he looked, and when he wrapped a meaty hand around Mac’s throat, he really had no choice but to let the goon cuff him.

He was lifted bodily and hung by his wrists on a hook in the ceiling. Mac struggled and yelled, but he couldn’t stop them. He swung painfully, his feet dangling a few inches off the ground, which put all of his weight on his wrists and shoulders

The goon left, having never said so much as a word, and Dulik circled Mac. “You are an American agent, yes? You are CIA?”

Mac didn’t answer. His captor merely smiled.

“It does not matter, I do not need to know. What matters now is that I have you. You are mine, and they will not find you here.”

Mac didn’t know where “here” was, but he knew that Riley could track anything and Jack would scour the globe for him. And until they found him, all he had to do was survive this guy's jabs. So Mac remained silent.

Dulik noticed the stubborn set to Mac’s jaw as he refused to speak, and laughed. “Do you think they will come? You wait. I give you four days, you will give up. If not sooner.”

Mac refused to be baited. Dulik chuckled as he gave Mac a push to send him painfully swinging, and left the room. 

Unfortunately, without his knife or full range of motion in his hands, Mac couldn’t get himself out of the cuffs. He was stuck.

  
  


**Seven hours by Mac’s watch — not that he could see it**

Mac’s shoulders  _ ached. _ He had been hanging still for what felt like it must have been hours, and was no nearer to escaping. Further, in fact, because he was starting to lose feeling in his fingers.

And he was bored out of his mind. 

He had spent a long time running intense theoretical physics and complex calculus equations in his head, and then moved on to translating various songs into all of the languages he knew. Challenge mode: they still had to fit the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the english version.

Mac had no idea what time it was. It wasn’t like he could check his watch, with his hands chained up over his head like they were. If he had to guess, he’d say around 7pm, local time. He was tired. He didn’t really like the idea of letting himself fall asleep in his hanging position, but it didn’t seem like Dulik was coming to get him down any time soon.

Heavy eyelids drooped down, head sunk down onto his chest, and the world was shattered by an utterly earsplitting sound. Mac jolted painfully, instantly alert. And suddenly, he understood what was going on:—

Dulik was going to use sleep deprivation as an interrogative tool. To weaken Mac’s mental defenses and inhibitions, to get him to talk.

Well, Mac was trained. He could deal with it. He’d do better if he had some coffee, but he knew he could keep his mental walls up through just about anything.

_ It’s just until Jack finds me. _

  
  


**Thirteen hours, by the watch that Mac now can see**

After twelve hours (and five more forced wake-up calls), the goon had come in alone to take Mac down from the hook. His arms and hands were numb, and his shoulders and back were killing him.

But being forced into a new, seated stress position? It was almost worse. Instead of his arms aching it was his legs. He had to admit, the pain was a pretty effective guard against sleep. But he’d had longer sleepless stretches in high school, this was nothing, yet.

  
  


**Two days**

They threw frigid water over him when he nodded off. The initial shock was bad, but now, hanging up again, Mac’s whole body was shaking. Muscle strain had something to do with it, sure, but it was mostly the icy water still soaking him in the chilly room.

His teeth chattered so hard he was afraid they might break. There was no part of him that wasn’t sore and aching. 

Worse, he was starting to lose his train of thought more often as he tried to distract himself, hiding in his head. His thoughts kept straying to Jack and Riley and Bozer and Matty. He knew they were looking for him, he knew. They wouldn’t leave him behind. He just needed to give them more time, needed to hold out as long as he could for them.

And when he put it like that, it was a little easier to ground his thoughts and keep distracted.

  
  


**Four days**

Mac was desperate to be able to nod off. The constant stress postions were exhausting, and his brain felt stuffed with cotton.

The loud music startled him every time his eyes strayed closed for more than a few seconds. He tried zoning out to get some relief, but Dulik seemed to catch on and walked in, slapping him so hard his teeth rattled.

Since then, there had been someone in the room at all times with him. Sometimes the first goon, sometimes another one. And now Dulik again.

“You are stubborn, American. But it is the fourth day. And your friends have not come. What is the word you use, disavowed? You must have been disavowed, assumed dead or beyond help. They don’t rescue lost causes, do they?”

Mac swallowed, blinking slowly. It wasn’t true; even if his government had disavowed him, Jack would move heaven and earth to get him back. He had before. 

“Perhaps you wonder, having only your thoughts for company, if you are strong, holding out against the torture so you will not break.” He leaned close. “You will break. It has taken longer than I expected, but I am patient.”

For the first time in days, Mac spoke directly to Dulik. “I’m never going to tell you anything, you may as well give up. You’re wasting your time.”

Dulik laughed. Mac was really starting to hate that sound. “Oh, my young, naïve friend. I do not want you to talk. I do not need information. I’m just having fun. That’s why you’re here: my own enjoyment.”

  
  


**Five days**

Mac was starving. 

They had been feeding him. Not a lot, and nothing he’d call food under normal circumstances, but it was enough to keep him alive. Mac knew vaguely that it was just his body reacting to the sleep deprivation. Sleep helps regulate a lot of hormones in the body, including the ones that control hunger. He knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him. 

But that didn’t change the fact that he was hungry.. 

The only good thing was that the gnawing ache kept him focused on his stomach, not his gritty eyes or his numb limbs. They’d gotten him sitting again. That was the only way he could tell the passage of time, that they moved him every twelve hours or so, and when he was sitting, he could see his watch.

  
  


**Six days**

Somewhere deep in Mac’s brain, he knew that extended lack of sleep could cause hallucinations. But he still didn't recognise it when the hallucinations started. 

_ Jack comes in to rescue him, a whole TAC team behind him. He reaches for Mac’s bound hands, smiling. “Let’s get you home, hoss. Boy, you had us worried.” But just behind Jack, one of the TAC guys takes off his helmet. It’s Murdoc. He grins, waves at Mac, and fires three rounds into Jack’s back before Mac can warn him. Jack looks at Mac, eyes wide in shock and pain. Mac screams as Murdoc’s horrible laugh that haunts Mac’s nightmares echoes in his ears, and Jack falls to the ground, blood spreading. _

_ Riley and Bozer are tied to a time-bomb. Mac needs to disarm it, but he can’t get his hands free. They’re chained above his head still, and he can’t pick the cuffs, can’t do anything but watch in horror as the timer beeps down. They’re encouraging him at first, but it turns to begging after he fails to free himself. Blood runs down his arms. Five minutes on the timer. The bomb is small, the explosion wouldn’t reach him. All it would do, really, is kill his best friends. Two minutes. They’re screaming for him now, begging him to try harder, to save them. He can’t. He can’t do anything but cry, and watch as they die before his eyes. He wants the blast to reach him too, to consume him alongside two of the people he loves most. It doesn’t. _

Mac had seen a lot of people blow up in his life. It was horrible, every time it had happened. He often had dreams about them, about the people he had failed. And sometimes in his worst nightmares, his subconscious superimposed his family over the faces of the victims. He had seen them die so many times, in so many different ways. There was something personal about an explosion. It was his job to keep bombs from hurting people. Those dreams were the worst. His hands would go too slowly, his brain wouldn’t come online in time. He failed them over and over in his dreams.

But he couldn’t have been dreaming this time, because that requires sleep. And he hadn’t been allowed to sleep, not for days now. It must have been real, if he wasn’t dreaming. He couldn’t do anything to save them. All he could do was scream and cry and beg for forgiveness.

  
  


**Eight days**

Mac kept nodding off, his exhaustion winning over his will, despite the best efforts of Dulik and his goons. The loud music and harsh sounds didn’t have an effect anymore on his exhausted brain. And they knew that if they kept hitting him, he would just be knocked out. He wished they would; he was desperate for any escape from his hellish reality.

The next time they came into Mac’s cell, Dulik had something in his hands. Mac’s vision was blurry, and he wasn’t entirely lucid anymore. Dulik crouched down beside him, reaching around Mac’s neck. Something was fastened over his throat. It wasn’t very heavy, or very tight. Just snug enough to be mildly unpleasant. 

“I don’t know if you can hear me still, boy, but this will keep you from checking out on me. You really have lasted longer than I expected you to. I’ve upped the stakes. This collar,” he said, touching it gently, “will shock you if you fall asleep. It reads where your head is. If it falls too far forward, zap! It also reads your heartbeat. If you relax enough, zap!” Dulik laughed. 

The laughter was the only part of the one-sided conversation that registered with Mac. That and the existence of the collar. He couldn’t bring himself to care a whole lot what it was for. 

Dulik left him alone again. He almost wished he weren’t alone all the time here. If he had someone to talk to, maybe being forced to stay awake wouldn’t be so exhausting.

_ He hears footsteps. They’re outside his cell door. Is Dulik coming back? Maybe to hit him? Mac isn’t sure if he’s fallen asleep again, not sure if that’s why Dulik would come to hurt him again. But no, he knows those boots. TAC boots. Just one pair. Jack. _

_ And when the door bangs open, sure enough, it is Jack. Alone, decked out in his finest TAC gear. The gun in his hand is smoking like in an old western. And Jack truly does have all the confident swagger of a cowboy. _

_ “Whoo! John Wayne ain’t got nothing on me, hoss! You shoulda seen it, I just took down three dumbasses with just one bullet! Well, and a cattle prod, but that ain’t important.” Jack walks over to Mac, crouching down beside him and putting a hand on his head. “You look like shit, Mac. What’s say we get you home, huh?” _

_ Mac thinks he’s never been happier to see Jack. Honestly, he could kiss him, if he wasn’t so damn tired.  _

_ Jack undoes the bonds keeping his legs locked in a crouch, and helps Mac to his feet. “C’mon, hoss, let’s go home.” _

_ They make it out into the bright sun, and Mac can see the GTO, just waiting for them. But he doesn’t make it three steps farther before there’s a blinding pain at his throat. _

Mac jerked upright with a yelp of pain. It cleared his head for just a moment, long enough to register that he was still in his cell, still crouched in a painful, miserable heap on the cold floor. There was a collar around his neck, that must have been what had hurt him. He must have fallen asleep, dreaming himself a rescue. But with his senses back in the room with him, Mac knew that Jack hadn’t been there. Jack hadn’t come for him. 

Mac cried weakly.  _ Jack, please, where are you? _

  
  


**Nine days**

He fought so hard to stay awake. He couldn’t remember any reason for doing so except to prevent pain. Because everything hurt. 

In a moment of lucidity, he tried to do math, to rehearse his debriefing for when they came for him ( _ they had to come for him, _ ) to picture Jack’s face clearly, but his mind skittered away, hiding deep inside him. 

He didn’t even have the presence of mind to look at his watch. The time didn’t matter, the day didn’t matter. They all blurred together with everything else. He had lost count of the number of times they had changed his stress position. Nothing mattered anymore except staying awake to avoid more pain. 

But being awake was almost as painful as the price for falling asleep.

  
  


**Ten days, four hours and 23 minutes since Mac went missing**

Some people called Jack Dalton hotheaded. And yeah, he tended to lead more with his heart than his head. That’s what he had Mac for, to balance him out. Without Mac, Jack charged headfirst into danger without a second thought.

There wasn’t time for second thoughts as he and Riley cleared the compound they had located. Riley went right, Jack went left, and he found the main man himself, Svelte Dulik. The bastard who had kept Mac away from him for so long.

The man was sitting in an easy chair, reading. He barely looked up at Jack.

“So you did come for him after all. I must say, I am surprised. It’s been a long time. You have no way of knowing if he’s alive or not. Why would you waste your efforts?”

Jack was seething before he walked into that room. He had been nursing anger for over a week now, just aching for a target to fire it all out at. And this bastard dared to insinuate that Jack would leave Mac?  _ Oh, no.  _

One shot, clean through the chest, had Dulik down on the floor. The next one went right through his skull.

“Because he’s my kid.”

Jack turned on his heels, scouring the place for his partner. He found a strong, steel door.  _ Must be it.  _ He busted it open.

Mac was sitting hunched against a wall. Crouched, with his ankles chained together, his knees forced between chained hands. It was an intense stress position, putting lots of strain on the legs and low stomach and back. Mac was shaking like a leaf.

Blue eyes stared blankly, so bloodshot and puffed up that it wouldn’t have surprised Jack if Mac couldn’t see at all. He certainly didn’t show any acknowledgement of Jack’s entering. Honestly, he looked catatonic, or very near to it. There were some bruises, but he didn’t really look hurt. Jack crouched down in front of Mac, talking gently, trying to get Mac’s eyes to focus on him.

“Mac, I’m here. It’s going to be alright, I’m getting you out. I’ve got you.” There was a black metal collar around Mac’s neck. Jack watched as Mac, who still seemed totally unaware of his presence, blinked hard, shaking his head slightly. “Hey, Mac, c’mon, we’re gonna get you home.”

Mac’s eyelids fluttered slowly, and his head drooped. Jack could see the obvious effort, even though it was heartbreakingly weak, that Mac was putting into keeping his head up, but his chin slumped forward onto his chest. Suddenly, there was a loud beep and an odd  _ brzapp! _ sound, both coming from the collar, and Mac’s head jolted back up with a strangled whimper.

_ Sleep deprivation.  _ Jack was horrified.  _ This whole time? I should have shot that motherfucker a few more times. _

He gently unlatched the collar, taking it off Mac’s neck. There were ugly burns in a ring around Mac’s throat that made Jack want to cry. He set to work on the chains at Mac’s wrists and ankles (both worn bloody). Mac collapsed into Jack’s arms.

As Jack sat on the floor, holding his shaking kid, Riley came through the door. 

“Building’s clear, just two goons and a guy who looked like you had already found him. How’s— oh God.” 

Yeah, Jack figured the two of them must have looked a fright. Jack had blood sprayed across his clothes, and Mac was limp and deadweight and still entirely unresponsive. Jack lifted Mac up in a bridal carry, cradling Mac’s head against his chest, and they got moving. Jack counted no fewer than four times Mac forced himself not to fall asleep. They picked up their pace to the getaway car that Bozer was keeping running for them.

Both of those kids had really come through. It had been no easy ten days for any of them, especially with the way Jack had been grouching at them. He owed them both an apology. Later, when Mac was safe in a hospital. And an apology for Matty wouldn’t be out of place either. She was monitoring their progress from home, and smoothing things over to boot. James MacGyver had declared his son disavowed, presumed MIA. He had been cold and aloof as ever, business as usual, despite saying that he was devastated. Jack just couldn’t bring himself to believe it, not when every second brought Jack closer to completely breaking down. Either way, an unsanctioned rescue op based on little more than desperate hope wasn’t something Oversight endorsed (even for his own son). Matty was making it right on the home front, so that Mac could have a place to go back to.

In the getaway car, an inconspicuous Honda Civic, Jack took the backseat with Mac, as Bozer drove to the nearest hospital. He pillowed Mac’s head in his lap, running fingers through filthy blond hair. Mac had some light stubble too, barely noticeable because of how fine and blond it was. 

He stared up at Jack, blinking himself awake again and again, refusing to submit to the reality of safety and comfort.

“It’s okay, Mac, you can sleep now. We’ve got you, kiddo, you’re safe,” Jack found himself saying over and over again. “No one’s going to hurt you anymore, you can sleep.” But Mac didn’t go for it. He had been wired so hard to fight sleep that he couldn’t simply stop and give in. Jack had hoped that Mac’s body would just take over and crash his whole system, but as they approached the hospital, Jack was forced to acknowledge that Mac had always been too stubborn for his own damn good.

At the hospital — and thank God at least one of the doctors spoke English, because they were in eastern Slovakia — they set Mac down onto a bed, and started an IV to sedate him. He tried so hard to fight it, even physically struggling to try and keep his mind from shutting down. But not even Mac could fight general anesthesia in the form of a fuckton of Ketamine.

He went down hard, and stayed down for days. Daaaaays. Riley called to update Matty, Bozer held Mac’s hand, and Jack sat in an uncomfortable chair by Mac’s side, not moving once. Riley and Bozer had rooms at a hotel less than a block away. Jack slept in the chair. If he slept at all.

Mac was transferred to Phoenix after maybe five days (Jack had lost count, it all blurred together when you refused to leave someone’s side). All his physical issues had been treated. His cracked rib was bound, his bleeding wrists and ankles from the cuffs were treated, the burns on his neck were well on their way to healing. There was some doubt as to the functionality of his vocal chords, but they could get to that when he woke up. 

If he woke up. That wasn’t something Jack allowed himself to dwell on. Mac had been off sedation for a long time now, but was still in a self-induced coma. Jack knew Mac’s brain had taken a hell of a metaphorical beating, in forced lack of sleep for upwards of 250 hours. Hell, the CIA hadn’t let them keep prisoners awake for more than 180 hours at a time. Mac’s body and brain were just fighting to get back somewhere near normal, he needed time. But even surrounded by the best medical staff Phoenix had to offer, and his family, there was a possibility that Mac honestly might never recover. 

James accepted that possibility when Doctor Reiss told him, and detached himself. A part of Jack thought that maybe it was a survival mechanism for James, to detach so it didn't hurt as much. But the rest of Jack wanted to punch James in the teeth for distancing himself from the reality that his son was tortured to, and perhaps beyond, the brink of human endurance. And James had done next to nothing to get him back.

Mac was back. Barely. And if James wouldn’t stay at his son’s side, Jack would. There was nothing that could get him to leave Phoenix med. Not Riley’s soft voice saying he should sleep in a real bed instead of a hospital cot, not Bozer tempting him with real food, not the well-meaning concern of Doctor Reiss, not even a gentle but direct order from Matty to go home. He informed them all that he was staying with Mac. He was going to stay with his boy.

  
  


**After three weeks of hospitalisation**

Mac had been in his coma for a long time. So long that Reiss was starting to worry. But finally, after almost a month, Mac started showing signs of waking. 

Now more than ever, Jack refused to leave Mac’s bedside. He had been living at Phoenix headquarters the whole time. He had used the gym showers, eaten cafeteria food (which actually wasn’t that bad), and slept on a cot in Mac’s room. He was going to be there when Mac woke up, dammit. And he was.

Mac’s fingers twitched. That was the first sign. Then his eyelids fluttered a bit, and his lips parted slightly. His eyes opened, lashes sticking together briefly. Jack sobbed, immediately pressing the call button for Reiss. 

  
  


Mac’s whole world felt extremely disconnected. His vision was a bit blurry, but when he tried to move his hands to rub the sleep from his eyes, they were clumsy and wouldn’t obey him. One of his hands was in Jack’s, anyway. Doctor Reiss came into the room, smiling brightly when she saw him. She told him that he would be okay. 

He tried to talk, but it hurt. “A combination of disuse and those shocks,” she explained softly. His vocal chords were a mess, but they’d get better. 

“You’re gonna be okay, Mac,” Jack said through tears. He looked like death warmed over. Mac could tell that Jack had been practically living at medical for who knows how long. Mac felt bad, and tried to say so, but both Jack and Reiss shushed him.

“Jus’ cuz your voice is gonna be fine don’t mean you should screw it up more just yet, okay hoss?” Jack smiled. Reiss ran through a list of what was the matter with him still: his sleep debt was still immense, his immune system was shot to hell, and every muscle he had was stiff and weak. It would be a long time before he would be field-ready again. She made sure he was comfortable, and left the two alone. Mac was glad. He liked Deanna Reiss fine, but right then, all he wanted was Jack.

Jack talked and talked, not expecting Mac to hold up an end of the conversation, for which Mac was very grateful. But he could feel exhaustion trying to pull him back under as Jack babbled at him. His body went immediately into panic mode, reflexively fighting against sleep out of fear of pain. But Jack was there, running a hand through his hair. He murmured softly that Mac was safe, that it was okay to sleep. Mac stopped fighting, sinking slowly into sleep and finally feeling safe. The last thing he heard was a quiet “Get some rest, hoss.”


	24. Day 24: You're not making any sense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had an image in my head of Mac, mouth duct taped shut with tears running over the gag. Had no idea where to go with it, so I did this. The BadGuy is pretty heavily inspired by Rickshaw, the villain from All Superheroes Must Die.

When Bozer rushed into the War Room in a panic, everyone else was already there. He had sounded the alarm because Mac had gone missing. He had only been gone a few hours, so they all tried to calm Bozer down. But he was having none of it.

“No, hey, guys, my boy was meetin’ me at a film convention, he and I’ve been talking about it for weeks now. He wouldn’t have just not showed up! No matter what project he was busy blowing up, he would have at least called me if he couldn’t make it. He always calls.”

And it was true. Mac often got lost in his own head while working on a project, losing complete track of time. He was late to lots of things, all the time. But he did always call when plans changed. Always. Which meant that if Mac had missed something he’d been excited about, and not called, something was wrong. 

Riley pulled up a tracker on Mac’s phone in so little time that it was almost frightening. She could do it for all of their phones, in no time flat. She didn’t make a habit of tracking them — that was just creepy — but she could find them at a moment’s notice. Provided they had their phone on them.

But either Mac’s phone was dead (which he almost never let happen) or destroyed, because her trace found nothing. 

As the four of them were discussing possibilities, Jack’s phone rang. A video call, from Mac. Jack answered immediately, and put the video feed up on the big screen. Matty blanked the windows.

The face confronting them was decidedly not Mac’s. He was an older man, maybe in his late forties, early fifties. Around Jack’s age. He had close-cropped salt and pepper hair and was clean shaven. None of the team had ever seen him before.

“Who the hell are you, and why do you have that phone?” Jack asked angrily. The man’s brow furrowed, but he smiled and he cut Jack off. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, your sound isn’t on. I can’t hear whatever lovely things you were saying. I think I’ll keep it that way.” He laughed, a grating cackle. “But you can hear me, loud and clear, I’m sure.”

“Riley, can you track the phone now?” Matty asked, taking advantage of the fact that the man couldn’t hear them.

“Yeah, but there’s some heavy encryption on it. Stuff I know Mac can’t do, so whoever this guy is must have done it. It’ll take a little bit to hack around.”

The laughing man continued, and Jack paced in front of the screen. “It appears that I’ve found something that… well, I guess he belongs to you. A government agent, as near as I can tell,” he chuckled. “He did put up quite a fight. Oh, I suppose you want to see him, don’t you?”

He propped the phone up against something, and then stepped back, giving them a view of the room behind him. A dark, empty room. Empty except for one chair.

Mac was glaring into the camera. He was shirtless, and his wrists were taped to the armrests with what looked like black duct tape. Jack could only assume that his legs were taped to the legs of the chair, given the way Mac was sitting. And the black tape circled his bare chest also, keeping his back pressed tight against the back of the chair, forcing him to sit nearly bolt upright.

But the worst, Jack could see, was the thick swatch of tape over Mac’s mouth. It looked painfully tight. His eyes were wide, and he was pale, but it didn’t look like Mac had been drugged. He was a little roughed up, but he didn’t look hurt.

The BadGuy circled the chair, continuing to monologue. “I called the first number in his phone, just hoping it would be someone who’d pick up. And I’m so, so glad that you did. Because now…” his words, spoken with sardonic mirth, bubbled into more laughter. Jack was really starting to hate that sound. A lot. “Now, you lot are every bit my prisoners as he is. You can’t find him, can’t do anything at all but watch.”

Jack tuned out the voice, focussing on Mac. He could see in those always-expressive blue eyes that Mac was scared. That tore Jack’s heart up. But he could tell that Mac was trying his hardest to tone down his own panic for the camera, knowing that his family was being forced to watch. As Mac looked right into the camera, right into Jack’s soul, he could tell that Mac was trying to reassure him. To tell them that he’d be alright, even though he couldn’t say anything out loud.

Jack couldn’t say anything out loud either. Nothing that would do Mac any good, since their end was muted. He couldn’t shout curses at the man, or tell Mac he was coming for him, just as soon as Riley broke through the encryptions. He needed to tell Mac that they would come for him, they were coming. He couldn’t say any of it.

The bastard kept up with his sickening laugher as he struck Mac hard across the face. A veritable barrage of fists and open-handed slaps fell upon Mac, and Jack found himself flinching at every strike, at each low, muffled grunt of pain. It looked like Mac was having trouble breathing. Trying to suck in air only through his nose was difficult enough, and his heaving chest probably didn’t jive well with the hits his captor landed on his unprotected torso.

And then, with no further ado (he actually said that, “with no further ado”), the laughing bastard walked off-screen and returned with something that made Jack break out in a cold sweat. A regular iron fire poker, with an inch or two of the end glowing red. This was practically medieval.

Jack watched as Mac’s eyes widened, and his already strained breathing picked up. They all watched. They could see him trying so hard not to panic for their sakes, trying to prepare himself for the pain. Jack shouted obscenities and threats, even though he knew it didn’t do any good. He knew Mac couldn’t hear him.

“I’ll just have to imagine what sweet nothings you’re saying.” The poker touched to the crook of Mac’s left arm, just briefly, and he flinched away with a soft yelp. His captor’s chuckling made him shake, and Jack could only barely hear the tiny, muffled whimpers.

And then, the poker went down across Mac’s bare ribs, held in place as Mac tried to jerk away. His eyes went wide and then clenched shut, tears forced from beneath Mac’s long eyelashes. The sound of his stifled, raw scream played over the video call made Jack come utterly unglued. He screamed for Mac, desperate to get through to him, to comfort him in the only way he could. But Mac couldn’t hear him.

Riley broke through the encryption finally, typing through her tears as they listened to Mac’s muffled sobbing and his captor’s sadistic laughter. They had a location. Jack didn’t hesitate a second to fling himself out the door, with Mac’s smothered screams in his ears and murder in his eyes.

—————

The psychopath ended the video feed with a scornful “Well, I think that’s enough for just now…” and moved to put the poker back by the fireplace.

Mac was shaking, sobbing quietly. Tears fell glistening over the black duct tape, and his hair hung in his eyes. He had screamed his throat raw and bloody, and his mouth had filled with blood when he bit his tongue. He couldn’t very well spit it out, not through the tight tape. He swallowed, hating the metallic taste and the burning ache in his throat.

His psycho captor returned to him, saying words that washed over Mac without registering. A blinding slap, and then the slam of a door. Alone, Mac’s consciousness came and went in waves, ebbing and flowing with the pain. The few deep burns — one had gone down even to the bone of his rib — those ones had burnt away the nerve endings in his skin. They didn’t really hurt. But the rest of the burns, littering his torso, were mostly shallow, barely even reaching past his epidermis at all. Those were the ones that hurt.

—————

Jack probably broke a million traffic laws, but his mind may as well have been on a different planet for all he cared. All that mattered to him was getting Mac out of the hands of whatever lunatic had captured him, for reasons entirely unknown. 

Well, maybe he had told them why. Jack had tuned out a large portion of monologuing, and he also hadn’t been quite all-there while Mac had been tortured. 

Either way, Jack was going to get Mac out or die trying. Just like he always did (why did it have to happen so often though?)

He bust down the flimsy wood door, and found himself in the room he had just seen over video. And there was Mac, tied in the chair, in the middle of the room. 

His head was hanging down onto his chest, but his eyes were open, blinking tears of pain down his cheeks and over the tape as every breath aggravated his burned body. Jack pulled out his knife and cut Mac’s bonds: first at his ankles, then the wrists, then the thick strap across Mac’s chest. Mac slid down into the chair with a whimper of pain, no longer held upright. 

Jack pulled him down to sit on the floor, keeping a hand on the back of Mac’s neck. He gently peeled away the tape on Mac’s face, but as gentle as he was, Mac still struggled against the discomfort of skin and peach-fuzz hairs being pulled, just like how the tape had left red marks on Mac’s chest and wrists, marks almost as angry and red as the burns striping his boy’s body.

Mac shook in his arms, sucking in air through his mouth after it was freed. Jack just held him. And he talked. He talked and talked, saying “It’s going to be alright, I’ve got you, I’m here.” And he was so damn happy that he could actually reassure his kid with his words. Mac could hear him now. 

Words were how Jack Dalton lived his life. He didn’t like silence all that much, didn’t trust it. He filled almost every moment with inane references and weird trivia and pointless stories and anything else he could think of. And he knew that Mac took some comfort from Jack’s rambling, that it helped him think, in some strange, unfathomable way, grounding him. 

And if Mac had ever needed grounding, it was now. And yeah, maybe Jack needed it as well. Not being able to talk to Mac all throughout his ordeal had been torture for Jack just as much as listening. So now, Jack just held his boy, and talked and talked and talked, until the rest of the cavalry showed up.


	25. Day 25: I think I'll just collapse right here, thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac collapses. That's it. Short and sweet :)

Fighting was really more Jack’s thing, but that doesn’t mean Mac can’t hold his own. Even if he had nothing but his fists, he could still do a pretty good job defending himself, despite being on the smaller, slimmer side of average. And if he had something to help him in his fight — say, the thin but sturdy PVC pipe he’d snatched off the floor of the warehouse — well that gave Mac the upper hand.

Which was good, because Jack was busy fighting off even more guys. Mac had already brought down one with a solid thunk to the head, and was working on another. It took a while, but he went down just like his pal had.

“Behind you, hoss!” Jack grunted, and Mac whirled around, bringing his PVC pipe with him in a fluid motion that probably looked really cool on the security cams Riley was monitoring them through. The new guy, probably four inches taller than Mac, and definitely much heavier, managed to nick Mac’s arm with something as he turned. It wasn’t a deep cut, barely even stinging, so Mac brushed it off as he decked the guard. It took two hits with the heavy plastic to get him down for the count, but after scanning the room for more attackers and seeing none, Mac was able to drop the pipe back onto the concrete floor.

Jack whooped as he downed his last guy. “Man, you know it sucks when we get made, but it’s awful fun to just kick some ass every once in a while, y’know?” He clapped Mac on the shoulder, and Mac could tell that Jack was looking him over for injuries. Surprisingly, Mac wasn’t hurt too bad. His recently-healed broken arm wasn’t too happy with him, and one of the guys had gotten a lucky jab in at Mac’s gut, but he’d be fine. 

After reassuring Jack (and quietly looking over Jack himself, happily finding nothing but a split lip and bloody knuckles), the two of them began booking it out of the warehouse toward their getaway car, about two blocks away.

It was much better than the lime-green minivan that no one had stopped giving Jack shit about. Just a regular light blue sedan, nothing too flashy. Mac would be glad to see the inside of it, though, and soon after that the inside of the waiting Phoenix jet.

Not three steps outside the warehouse into the bright, brisk autumn afternoon, Mac was blinking away bright spots in his vision. They went away as they kept walking, and he blamed them on the sudden sunlight. His arm was sore, but he had just KOed three guys with a piece of piping. His ears ringing, though? He was having trouble thinking up a reason for that one. 

Actually, he seemed to be having trouble thinking in general.

Jack must have noticed that Mac’s stride had slowed down, because he turned to peer at his partner. “Now, you said you were okay. You ain’t looking so good though, Mac.”

“I’m fine,” Mac protested, shaking his head to try and clear it. Which failed miserably. A wave of vertigo slammed into him, and he staggered. 

“Yeah, ‘fine,’ he says, yep, you’re fine. Bullshit. You’re never ‘fine.’ You’ve gone all pale.”

Mac was too busy focusing on breathing and not throwing up to listen to Jack snarking him. “I just… gotta get to the car ‘n sit down. I’ll be okay.” He wished his voice came out a little stronger.  _ What the hell is wrong with me? _

Jack looked a little irritated, but also very worried. He put his hands on Mac’s shoulders, keeping him from swaying where he stood. “You said you weren’t hurt.”

“I wasn’t!” Mac protested weakly. “I got a jab to the stomach, and my arm’s still sore.” His arm was actually hurting him a lot more than it should have been, even after a fight. He looked down at it, and saw the small graze on his forearm. “And that,” he pointed clumsily with his other hand. 

For as small and shallow as the wound was — it had only bled a few drops, after all — it looked really bad. All red and inflamed.  _ There’s no way it could have gotten infected so quickly…  _ Jack took Mac’s arm and examined it. The movement caused Mac to hiss in pain, and the vertigo and nausea increased tenfold. No infection he’d ever heard of could do that. But maybe… maybe poison could. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the thing that had cut him; he’d just assumed it was a knife. But it could have been a syringe.

He tried to tell Jack, but his mouth was dry. He tried swallowing, but couldn’t remember how, or why he needed to. His ears weren’t ringing anymore, but all he could hear was his own breathing. Mac felt his face flushing, felt sweat break out on his back. He was cold, suddenly, and shaking. He could vaguely see Jack’s mouth forming words, and Mac could have read his lips if his brain hadn’t gone numb. It felt empty in there, except for the too-loud, too-close sound of his own breathing. 

He felt his legs buckle beneath him. He felt strong arms catch him before they both hit the pavement. And he felt nothing else as his eyes rolled back into his head.


	26. Day 26: if you thought the head trauma was bad...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of Day 3: Manhandled
> 
> This references the OC of my bestie FancyF1amingozz, featured in her story When Paperclips Fly, but she isn't in this chapter personally.

The number of times Jack’s been shot, he should’ve been used to it by now. But it still hurt.

Whoever had shot him, she’d gotten away, and all Jack was able to do was fire a shot at her heels to make sure she didn’t come back. He was just glad she had only shot to incapacitate, not kill. Something told him that if she had been aiming to kill, he’d be dead. No, she got him just good enough that he couldn’t follow her.

Not that he had been planning on it. He had seen her pistol-whip Mac, and he had fallen to the ground limp as a rag doll. 

Jack limped over to Mac, nearly falling as he put weight on his left leg. A through-and-through in his thigh wouldn't kill him, but it hurt like a bitch.

Mac was lying still, blood streaming from his temple where the gun had struck. Jack hobbled over and fell to his knees, jarring his leg and making himself gasp. Breathing through his own pain, he turned Mac over onto his back. 

Jack’s fingers fumbled with his phone in one hand and Mac’s carotid artery with the other. He found the steady pulse just as Matty picked up the call, and Jack couldn’t have said which he huffed “Oh thank God” at more directly.

“What happened, Dalton? Did you get the ambassador?”

Jack huffed a laugh. “Dead before we got there. One bullet, clean through.” Their orders had been to keep the corrupt ambassador from attending tomorrow’s convention in any way possible. The plan had been kidnapping. But dead worked just as well, especially considering the bomb he had been planning to set off.

“Someone else apparently had your same intel, Matty. Though I wouldn’t call her friendly, exactly.” Jack tapped Mac on the cheek, trying to bring him back around. “Mac’s hurt. A concussion at the very least, and one of his knees ain’t looking so pretty. I’m trying to wake him, but some medical transport would be appreciated.”

“On its way,” Matty said. Jack could practically see her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What about you, Dalton? Blondie isn’t the only one hurt, from the tone of your voice.”

Damn. Trust Matty to be able to tell Jack was in pain over the phone.

“Yeah, she kinda shot me. A bit. A through-and-through in my thigh. Won’t lie, I will appreciate some medical attention, but I’m more worried about Mac’s noggin. You tell those medics to hurry.”

Matty reassured him that help was only about ten minutes out from their position, and then hung up. Jack almost wished she didn’t: it was a bit too quiet, because Mac still hadn’t stirred.

Jack continued to tap at Mac’s pale face, avoiding the graze just over the right cheekbone. “Come on, man, up and at ‘em. Let’s go, let’s see those baby blues. Wake up.”

Mac groaned, and Jack had never been happier to hear it. Generally, Mac’s “I’m concussed and everything hurts” groan wasn’t a good thing, but today it meant he was coming around.

“Hey there, Hoss, take it easy. Medevac’s here in ten.” Mac didn’t respond, except to flutter his eyes open and furrow his brow in pain and confusion; and Jack could have sworn that Mac mouthed “fuck,” but no sound came out, so he couldn’t be sure.

—————

For all that people told him he was brilliant, all Mac’s ‘brilliant’ brain could come up with as he felt himself tap-tap-tapped awake was a less-than-elegant “fuck.” He had no idea if he said it aloud — his ears were ringing. From far away, he heard a voice — Jack’s voice — talking to him. He probably wasn’t actually far away, and he sounded like he was getting closer. Mac knew it was just the ringing abating, not any shift in physical distance. He could feel Jack’s steady hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, his entire skull ached. But he could hear Jack talking now, and Jack wanted him to look at him. To make sure he was alright.

Mac knew he had a concussion, he knew his pupils will be dilating out of sync with each other, and he probably wouldn’t be able to focus all that well. And any light would send blinding pain through his head. So he kept himself in the lovely darkness behind his eyelids. Jack would have to settle for a verbal response.

“‘M okay, Jack. I have a concussion.” Mac could hear the slur in his own voice, but couldn’t bring himself to care a whole lot.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that, kiddo. Your pupils are way out of whack. Let’s get you sitting up—”

“What do you mean, my pupils? I haven’t even opened my eyes yet, Jack.”

There was a long pause. It worried Mac. “Jack, are you okay? Still with me?”

“Oh yeah, hoss, I’m fine. I mean, I got a hole in my thigh, but medevac should be here any minute, so that’s fine, but Mac... you do know your eyes are open, right?”

An icy jolt of fear shot through Mac, piercing the blurriness of the concussion. “What, no, they’re…” Mac blinked. Nothing. Blinked again, harder. “It’s…” Squeezed his eyes shut and snapped them open. “I can’t… Jack!” Mac scrabbled his hands out, searching for his partner and making no effort to control his racing breaths. “Jack, I can’t see!”

He instantly felt Jack take his flailing hands in his own. Jack’s hands were warm, calloused, and had always felt safe. Mac tried to let Jack’s touch ground him some.

“Easy, it’ll be okay, they’ll be here soon, and we’ll get you checked out. You got a pretty nasty whack to the head, man, that’s been known to do this.”

Yes, a hit to the head could cause blindness — either total or partial — and it was often temporary, depending on what went wrong. But knowing these facts didn’t make living them any easier. It was pitch dark around him, and as Jack tried to sit him up, a wave of vertigo suddenly crashed through him. He felt like a deep-sea diver, unable to tell which way was up.

Jack kept talking, and it was working to help Mac breathe through his panic and his pain, until Mac jostled his broken knee while sitting up. It sent a searing pain through him, compounding with his raging headache, and the agony paired with the vertigo had Mac leaning over and emptying his stomach onto the pavement.

Slowly, Jack’s hand rubbing against Mac’s back brought the aching down, and allowed Mac to move back to sitting up again. He heard a shuffling noise, and Jack’s arm was slung over his shoulders. Their legs and sides were touching: Jack was sitting next to him.

“Jack, I can’t see,” Mac murmured. He felt helpless, a feeling he hated. He always prided himself on his self-sufficiency — a product of his overactive mind and unspoken fear of abandonment. Now, he couldn’t help the insidious fear that he would never see again, never be useful to anyone, and why would anyone care for him if he couldn’t contribute anything?

“Hey, don’t go losin’ yourself in that big head of yours, Mac. You’ll be okay.” Jack rubbed a hand up and down Mac’s arm.

Mac swallowed. “What if I’m not? What if it’s... permanent? Jack, what will I  _ do _ ?”

Jack sighed. “I don’t know what you’ll do, Mac. But I do know that I’ll be right here—” he nudged Mac softly in the ribs. “Right here with you. You’re not alone, pal. No matter how this plays out. I’ve got you.”

Sirens were approaching. Phoenix medical sirens had just a slightly different tone to them than was standard. It had always irritated Mac, but now he found some comfort in it, knowing that he was found by his people.

The two of them hobbled to the ambulance together, neither letting go of the other, and Phoenix med staff knew better than to try and separate them.

—————

Morphine, Jack decided, was an excellent thing. The second his adrenaline from finding and stabilizing Mac wore off, the pain from his leg hit him like a horse's kick.  _ Not too different, actually. Both hurt about the same _ .

He was in a bed in Medical, right next to Mac’s bed. Jack was lying stretched out. All his stitches were in place, and his leg would be fine. So long as he was good to it for a while, that was.

Mac was sitting up, and for the first time Jack had ever seen, he was still. It was unnerving. Unless the kid was sleeping, he was always fidgeting with something or gesturing animatedly. But Mac sat still, as if afraid.

And no wonder. Apparently the knock to the head Mac had received had completely blacked out his vision. He couldn’t see a thing. It would terrify anyone. The doctors had taken scans of Mac’s head about twenty minutes ago, and would be back soon with the results. Jack could imagine that waiting in the dark to hear whether or not he would ever see again would definitely be cause for freaking out.

He was trying to keep up a steady stream of chatter to keep Mac from worrying too much. It wasn’t really working. Mac’s responses were monosyllabic, at best. Jack knew Mac was plunging deep into what-ifs and what-thens, because that’s just what Mac did. It’s who he was. The keen scientific mind analysed scenarios and formed hypotheses, and the trauma from abandonment early in Mac’s life led him to imagine worst-case scenarios that overshadowed any possible good outcome. It wasn’t that Mac was necessarily pessimistic. Just that he prepared himself for the worst by building up a wall around himself.

Once those walls were built, it was hard for even Jack to break his way through. So he was doing everything he could to delay construction.

“Hey Mac, tell me about our mystery assassin lady. Did she say anything?”

Finally, Jack got a reaction from him: a dry chuckle. “She told me to butt out of her op, that she took care of it. She was fast, stronger than I expected. She was good.”

Jack laughed softly. “Well I knew that much. Hell, she got a shot at me before I could even blink.”

Silence fell over them again as Mac didn’t respond. Jack hated it.

He had seen Mac’s eyes nearly every day for years. Bright, piercing blue. Sometimes they were melt-your-heart puppy eyes, sometimes a steely glare. A firm confidence, a spark of mirth. Mac’s eyes were always so expressive. Jack had seen faraway eyes, spaced out eyes, drugged-to-the-gills eyes, sleepy eyes, sad eyes, laughing and sarcastic eyes. Glazed with concussions and drugs, and unable to recognize him, had been Jack’s least favorite Mac-eyes, followed closely by in-pain eyes. But he had never seen Mac’s eyes so empty and blank. If there was any expression in them, it was fear. And it was the worst, Jack decided, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to see them much longer.

Oh, he would stay with Mac through anything. He’d made that promise to himself years ago, and would say it as often as he had to until Mac believed it. If Mac would never see again, Jack would be right by his side — empty eyes and all. But Jack wished more than anything in the world to see those eyes light up explaining something geeky.

The silence was bordering on uncomfortable when the doctor finally walked in. Mac jumped at the sound, but relaxed marginally as he recognized Doctor Reiss’ voice.

“Well, Mac, the scans have come through. There’s some swelling in your head that’s pressed down on your optic nerve. It’s fairly common—”

Mac cut her off, gritting his teeth. “Is. It. Permanent?”

Deanna Reiss, used to Mac’s general displeasure in medical and also understanding of Mac’s current predicament, smiled patiently. “No. As soon as the swelling from the concussion lessens the pressure on your optic nerve, your eyesight should recover fully.”

The relief Jack saw on Mac’s face was beyond description. Mac’s entire body relaxed as soon as the doctor said “no.” Honestly, he looked on the verge of tears.

Dr. Reiss babbled on for a few more minutes — something about nerves and an intercanalicular. Jack didn’t understand a whole lot of it, but he didn’t mind that. All he cared about was the smile on Mac’s face that finally reached his eyes.


	27. Day 27: Who had natural disasters on your 2020 bingo card?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't live in an area with cyclones/flash flooding, so this is probably wildly inaccurate.

Rain had always fascinated Mac. When he was a kid, he couldn’t really observe rain very often, so he researched it instead. Most kids were bored by the water cycle. Water was one of Mac’s favourite substances (you know, besides combustible chemicals). 

But he really didn’t appreciate the storm surge happening around him in coastal Florida.

The windshield wipers of the rental car couldn’t go fast enough to keep the windshield clear enough to see well. And the tires skidded in ways that Mac really didn’t like. He had thought he had more time to get to the safehouse before the dangerous storm hit, but he was still about ten minutes out. More like twenty, given the speed he needed to drive at to keep from crashing.

Two feet of water could carry a car away. Mac didn’t know quite how close he was to that mark, but the rain certainly wasn’t stopping, and he was driving on a slick highway next to a river. Fortunately, he was one of the only cars out, which meant he could drive on the wrong side of the road to give the swelling river some space.

He was alone in the car: Jack had already been airlifted out for medevac. Nothing life-threatening, Jack would be fine, but it had been urgent enough that Mac had needed to finish their mission alone. Which he had, no problem. 

Mac wasn’t sure if this would have been any better at all if Jack were in the car with him. On the one hand, Jack could have driven, which would have taken a good level of stress off of Mac. On the other hand, things could easily,  _ easily  _ go wrong really fast during a cyclone, and on the off-chance he got hurt, he didn’t want Jack to be hurting with him.

Not that he had been able to keep Jack from getting hurt in the first place…

Mac shook that thought out of his head. There would be plenty of time to hash that out with Jack, who would be  _ perfectly fine, _ later. After Mac had gotten himself somewhere hopefully drier. Water was actually seeping into the car some, from the sheer force of the storm outside.

Bozer called him, he recognized the ringtone (“Wannabe,” The Spice Girls, for reasons unknown) and Mac picked up without taking his eyes from the puddle of a road. “I’m kinda driving right now, Boze,” he said, practically yelling to be heard over the pounding rain.

“I know, man, where you at? We’ve got a chopper to take you out from the safehouse, but it’ll be dangerous to get much closer to you than that.”

Mac swerved slightly to avoid a fallen tree. “It’s dangerous to even  _ be  _ in a chopper in this weather, Bozer! What the hell are you doing?” As much as Mac would appreciate a lift out of Florida, getting into a helicopter and flying through a tropical storm sounded like hell. 

As Bozer tried to semi-rationally explain his reasoning for feeling the need to accompany the exfil team in the chopper, Mac barely listened. The water both inside and outside the car was getting higher. It must have been about two feet outside, and was beginning to pool uncomfortably by his feet. 

“...so what’s your eta, then, Mac?” he caught the tail end of whatever Bozer had been saying.

“Ah… maybe five minutes? Ten?” Mac was just guessing now. He didn’t really know the terrain, Jack had been driving before. All he knew was that he was still on the highway. “I’m driving as fast as I can, but it isn’t exactly— SHIT!”

Mac swerved hard to avoid an oncoming car, but in swerving, he spun out. The water caught the car up, and threw it. Or that’s what it felt like, anyway. Mac was rattling around painfully, and he could hear Bozer yelling over the phone. He slammed one hand out to brace himself on anything he could, and desperately tried to regain control over the car with the other. No luck.

Finally, it skidded to a halt, the impact sending Mac’s phone into the puddle of water at his feet. He fished it out, and it was still working okay, but Bozer’s voice was fritzing out a bit.

“Mac…. okay…. to me, bro…”

“I’m okay,” Mac replied shakily, and was actually quite relieved to find that it was true. He would probably have some wicked bruising from being tossed around like a rag doll, but that seemed to be the extent of his physical injuries. “The phone fell in water though, Boze, so you’re breaking up some.”

“...are you? Still…. -afehouse?”

Mac nearly laughed at that. There was no way he could make it to the safehouse now. He had no idea where he was, which direction he was facing, or even if the car would run. And the water outside was just rising as the rain showed no sign of calming any time soon.

With water rising outside, more of it leaked inside. Which was bad. He told Bozer just the basics, that he didn’t know where he was, but he was on the highway, and he’d just have to wait out the storm. “Though honestly, I’m more worried about the car flooding, right now.”

It may have just been static, but Mac could have sworn he heard a squawk come from his best friend. “...ya mean floodin…. Where th…. kind of car?”

“Oh, no, there’s no way you’re flying a chopper out to me, Bozer, that’s suicide.”

“Just as suic… waiting to drow… not gonna happen, Mac.”

Mac wasn’t entirely sure if he would drown. The car was definitely taking on water, and pretty quickly, too, but it wasn’t sinking or anything. But as water swirled around his calves, and still rising, he had to really consider the possibility, and the options he was left with.

“I can’t open the door, there’s too much pressure on it from the water outside. I could get the window down and get out that way, but I don’t think getting out of relative shelter is a good idea in a storm like this. I’d get swept off. I’d rather maybe drown than definitely drown.” He heard helicopter rotors through the phone, even over the rain. “No, Bozer, you ground that damn chopper, I’m not gonna have you guys risk your lives for me!”

“...oo late, bud, we…. comin’ to get….”

Mac cursed as the connection dropped entirely. The water was almost up to the seat now. Mac unbuckled and stood up as best he could. If the water continued rising at its current rate, it would reach his head in about five minutes. He didn’t know how far Bozer and the exfil chopper had been when they had taken off, but he didn’t think even a chopper could get to him in time. 

Mac stood in the car, just breathing. The water wasn’t too cold, but it was still unpleasant. He made sure everything valuable from the car — everything he and Jack might have left in there that they would miss — was on his person. Most of it wasn’t waterproof, but it would be what it would be. 

As the water continued to rise around him, filling the small car, Mac regretted that Bozer’s call had dropped. He would have loved someone to talk to. He hated drowning, he hated it so much. Waterboarding and nitrogen-boarding and a few other near-death suffocations had instilled in him what was probably a more-than-healthy fear of not being able to breathe. The sensation terrified him, of not being in control of his own body, of not being able to regulate his panic and his breathing. There was no way to think a way out of forced drowning, and even if there was, his brain short-circuited. Every time.

So it went without saying that Mac was scared. He always imagined himself dying on missions. Always saw it in his head, every outcome, every death he could possibly die. His teammates had always assured him that he wasn’t alone, but he had always known he would die alone. And as the water now reached his chest, and he heard no  _ thud-thud-thud _ of helicopter blades nearby, he sighed shakily, resigning himself to his fate.

He had completed his mission, he would die having saved hundreds of lives. It’s how any field agent and military man would be honoured to leave this life. He had promised his life to the service of his country many years ago. He just regretted that he hadn’t managed to save Jack, to keep him from getting hurt. Even if the alternative would have been Jack dying here with him. It was an incredibly selfish wish, one that Mac hated as soon as it manifested itself in his head, but if Jack were here with him, he at least wouldn’t be dying alone. At least he would be able to tell Jack just how much he loved him, make sure he knew that Mac appreciated everything he did. How Jack was a better friend, partner, and maybe even father, than Mac had ever deserved or could ever ask for.

As he lifted his chin to get another few moments of air, Mac felt a tear slide down his cheek. Now it came to it, he was plain terrified. As the water passed over his lips and filled his nose, he held his breath as long as he could. But it was only so long before his body began to fight him. His lungs burned, and he felt them spasm, desperate for air. His body bucked, bubbles of air sneaking past his lips. His vision blurred, his chest ached, his head pounded. Drowning hurt. And then, finally, Mac felt himself sinking into oblivion. The last thing he saw were air bubbles floating up from his mouth.

—————

Bozer wasn’t really a fan of helicopter rides even before trying to go through a cyclone, but Mac needed him. Hell if he would let his brother drown.

He and the rest of the exfil team scanned the submerged highway for the red SUV that Jack had rented. It took what felt like a long time to locate the car. Bozer jumped down onto the roof of the car just as soon as the chopper was down low enough. As he almost slid off, he was incredibly grateful for the rack-railing thing that SUVs had on the top of them. He looked through the driver’s window, knocking, but his hand stilled.

He saw Mac, alright. Saw him floating, limp and completely submerged. His blond head bobbed as the car was jolted by an exfil agent landing on the car.

For reasons previously unknown to Bozer, the exfil chopper had a welding torch in it. He had figured it was for repairs, but this guy used it to cut through the steel roof. Bozer reached in as soon as it was clear, and grabbed Mac by the back of his shirt, hauling him out with the help of the other guy.

They somehow got Mac onto the chopper, though Bozer couldn’t have said how. All he focused on were Mac’s blue-tinged lips and still hands. They laid him out on the floor of the helicopter, and Bozer started breathing for Mac immediately. He had already been trained in field first aid, it was one of the first things he had learned. And definitely one of the things drilled in the hardest. 

He breathed for Mac, not caring that he was soaking wet and shivering, not caring that he was getting a little dizzy, and barely even noticing the agent who had started chest compressions. All Bozer could think was  _ please, Mac, come on, you gotta breathe, you gotta make it, please. _

_ I can’t lose another brother. _

It took so, so long, but Mac’s whole body jerked convulsively, and he choked, spluttering out water. They got him turned on his side, and Bozer kept a hand on Mac’s back as he retched. When Mac’s breathing calmed some, he tried to sit up.

“I…” Mac’s voice was rough, and he still sounded pretty waterlogged to Bozer. “I really hate drowning.” He curled his shaking hands into fists, pressing them into his legs. “Like, a lot.”

Bozer laughed, a hysterical sound with tears in it, and as he gripped Mac in a tight hug, he could feel Mac chuckling too. But laughing seems to hurt Mac, and he coughs again. It’s a hacking, deep cough. It doesn’t sound healthy. 

“I guess... “ Mac started when he got his voice under control again. “I don’t suppose I can get out of a visit to medical?” he asked miserably. 

“Nope,” Bozer chuckled, drinking in the sight of his living, breathing best friend happily. “But hey, I’ll make sure you get a bed next to Jack, how ‘bout? He’s gonna be fine, and dammit, so are you.”


	28. Day 28: such wow, etc.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riley angst with a side of whump! <3

Jack was helping Riley move the last of her boxes out of her Phoenix-paid apartment, and into one of her very own. It was the first time in her whole life that she’d had her own place, and she was excited to start making it look like home. 

The box she was carrying had her small collection of books, movies, and some other office-supply type things. Journals, pads of paper, pens. Duct tape. Things like that. The box Jack had was significantly heavier, full of various cords and charging banks and an extra keyboard. Nothing breakable, of course. She didn’t trust her rigs with anyone, not even Jack. 

Mac and Bozer had been a huge help with rearranging furniture and getting each box into the room it belonged in. They had even helped with some unpacking. All that was left were these two boxes, and maybe half an hour left of arranging, and Riley would officially have a home of her own. 

Jack was chattering about the ranch, again. Silly things, like wrangling cows and grabbing electric fences. None of it was anything Riley had never heard, in all the years she’d known Jack. He had always been talkative. It had annoyed her at first: she thought he just talked because he liked to hear his own voice. And maybe that was true to some degree. But as Riley had gotten to know Jack Dalton, she realised that even if there wasn’t a point to the story he told, there was always a point in telling it. Sometimes it was to distract, to put something into perspective, to call attention to something. But often, more often than not, Jack talked because he cared, and trusted the person he was talking to. Words were just how Jack did things.

So Riley put up with his chatter as they schlepped their boxes down a short flight of steps to the front door.

It was fortunate it was such a short flight of steps, really, because when Riley’s foot slipped out from beneath her, she didn’t have too far to tumble.

She yelped as she hit the ground by her doorstep, accompanied by the thudding of her books scattering and a painful snapping sound. Jack set his box down immediately, and was at Riley’s side before she could blink. “Hey, baby, you okay? Jeez, you startled me there.”

She waved Jack off as she tried to remember how to breathe. Her ankle ached dully as her whole body seemed to vibrate with the jolt of adrenaline that had shot through her. “I think… I think I’m alright.” She slowly sat up, and Jack laid a hand steady on her shoulder.

“What did you trip over?” he asked, glancing at the steps before looking her over again. 

Riley chuckled mirthlessly. “My own feet, as far as I can tell.” She grabbed a few of her scattered books that she could reach without moving, tossing them back into their upturned box.

Jack frowned as his eyes fell onto her ankle. And as Riley looked at it, she could see why: it was swollen, purpling, and throbbing like a bitch. 

“Ah shit. I think I twisted it,” she said.

“Well here, let’s get you on your feet and get you inside. Prop it up, icepacks, all that good stuff.” Jack offered a hand to help her up, and she seriously contemplated not taking it. The two of them hadn’t quite made up for what happened in their past. She didn’t need to be babied, she wasn’t twelve anymore and could take care of herself. But her ankle did hurt, and she hissed in pain as she tried to move it. So she took Jack’s help, and stood on one leg. 

“Alright, let’s get you insid— whoa!” The second Riley put any weight on her leg, it buckled beneath her, and she couldn’t stop from crying out. Jack caught her as she fell. “Looks like it might be a bit more than twisted,” he said, inspecting her ankle again. “I think we should take you in, maybe have it wrapped up.”

Riley nodded, trying not to show how much she hated that idea. She wasn’t Mac with his intense dislike of hospitals or anything, but it was a little embarrassing to have broken her ankle falling down a flight of six stairs. And Jack would need to drive her in. What was it she was just thinking about her not needing to be babied, because Jack wasn’t her dad and she wasn’t a kid?

Once more, Jack helped her to her feet, and before she could even say a word, he scooped her up in a bridal carry. 

“Jack! What the hell? Put me down, I can walk!”

Jack chuckled softly. “Yeah, that worked out real well last time you tried it, Ri. Nope. I’ll have Mac come by and get those boxes brought in, but for now, I’m gonna get you taken care of.”

It had been a long time since Riley had felt like anyone had taken care of her. Even before she was on her own in prison, she had felt like she was taking care of her mom, protecting her, instead of the other way around. And on missions, everyone was so preoccupied with what they were doing, and Riley was just trying to help, trying to prove that she belonged out here in the world doing good instead of in prison, locked up for her skills. She didn’t have time to need caring for.

Honestly, the last time anyone had really taken care of her was before Jack had left her, when she was almost eighteen. And Riley didn’t think she was quite ready to process that. Not now. Right now, the only thing that was happening was that she was hurt, and Jack was taking care of his teammate. Not his daughter, because he had left. 

But as he gently helped her into the car and propped her ankle into an elevated position, driving to a hospital and staying as she got checked out, it sure felt like she was his kid again, and he was taking care of her. 


	29. Day 29: I think I need a doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of how Jack got injured referenced in Day 27 (the natural disaster one), plus some follow-up.  
> Gonna be honest, this is the fastest I have every cranked out a story. Took me a little less than half an hour. So I'm sorry in advance :)

When did missions ever go smoothly? 

Never. The answer was never. That never happened. Ever. Something always went wrong. Mac called it Murphy’s Law. That was basically the only sciency-law that Jack knew, because it was the one that applied most often to his life, his line of work.

And whoever this Murphy bastard was, he was currently getting Mac and Jack stuck in a locked room as they were trying to hightail it out of Florida’s capitol building. While there were armed hostiles trying to kill them. Not fun. 

Mac was working on God-knows-what to get them out of the room. “I just need to increase the force of the lever and—” 

“Mac, c’mon, just lemme shoot the damn thing. It would be easier, faster, and I wouldn’t have to be listening to you technobabble at me.” Jack didn’t really mind Mac’s chatter, but right now, he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture about physics like he was in high school again.

But just like the time when Mac wouldn’t let him shoot his brute-force pencil-pushing codebreaker thing off a safe door, Jack would have to leave his gun in the thigh holster for now. He wasn’t sure what Mac was doing, but a few moments later, the door was opened, and Jack moved into the hallway in front of Mac.

It was natural, instinctive, to be in front of Mac. Not only was he clearing the premises, but if anyone were to fire at them, he would be able to shield Mac much more easily. It was like watching his back, but from the front. They moved down the hallway, looking for stairs down to the ground floor, where they would escape to their waiting exfil, mission accomplished.

They found no stairwell at the end of the winding hallway, just a split. They could go left or right.

“Alright, hoss, my gut’s telling me left here.”

Mac looked mildly disgruntled. He didn’t really put much stock into gut feelings, though he usually trusted Jack’s. “No, I looked over the blueprints of the building, the stairs are to the right of us.”

“Yeah, and that’s exactly where I would be waiting if I were trying to catch the two guys who broke into the capitol building to destroy information on illegal doings. I say left.”

“Jack, the only way out is the stairs, unless you want to jump from a third story window. We have to go right.”

Jack didn’t like it. Maybe the guys after them weren’t as tactically-minded as Jack, so maybe they wouldn’t be waiting by the stairs, but a large part of Jack was very sure that going right was a bad idea. But he trusted Mac’s judgement, he always had. Mac had always gotten both of them out of everything, alive. “Alright, hoss, you win. Right it is.” And Jack led the way, Mac following behind.

Jack only ever said “I told you so” to prove a point. He never really held another person’s mistakes over their head for very long, because he had made plenty of mistakes in his own life. But now, as the pair of them walked to the stairwell and were met with a storm of bullets, Jack just had to say it.

“What did I tell you, boy? They’re waiting for us.”

Mac had his “I’m thinking” face on, so Jack didn’t say a whole lot more. He fired back a few times, careful to conserve ammo. He couldn’t hold a shootout for very long, not against four guns with just his one. “Whatever you’re thinking, Mac, think it faster!”

And Mac did. He somehow unhinged a door with his knife and held it up as a shield. They ran behind it, charging into the BadGuys. Jack managed to get three of them down, and they squashed one with the door. But as they ran down the stairwell, a gunshot rang out, and pain exploded in Jack’s side. He stumbled, nearly crashing into Mac and sending the pair of them tumbling. As it was, Mac steadied him as he staggered, throwing an arm over his shoulders. They didn’t have time to stop.

Jack fumbled for the TAC radio on his vest, and called for medevac as they ran. His side burned as they ran, and he held it tightly. It had been a very lucky shot: just barely missing the vest and tearing a chunk out of his side. He’d live, provided medevac got to them before their pursuers. He could hear more of them than just the one, now, but Mac was running them toward their exit point as fast as he could.

Jack was trying not to be dead weight, but his side hurt. Finally, they got out into the overcast, humid weather that signalled an oncoming storm, and a chopper was waiting for them. Mac helped the medics get Jack on board, and Jack expected Mac to jump on as well, but he didn’t.

“The mission’s still not over, Jack. I have to grab the disc of intel from the safehouse.” He started to walk away as the rotors started whirring. “You just stay alive, I’ll see you in a few hours!” Mac had to shout to be heard as they took off. Jack saw Mac sprinting to the rental car — a cherry-red SUV — and then one of the medevac guys was pressing down on his side and everything hurt.

—————

Jack woke up sluggishly. He remembered being put down for surgery. The bullet had nicked something important, though for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was. His side throbbed dully, but he could tell he was on some good pain meds. He looked sleepily around the room. He was in a civilian hospital. There were cheery posters on the walls and little informative signs on the benefits of handwashing and whatnot. 

  
His scan of the room ended with a view of another hospital bed, pushed up near his own. Mac was in it, looking a little groggy, but otherwise totally fine. 

“Hey, I know you,” Jack smirked. “What brings you here?”

Mac looked up at him, and Jack could see those blue eyes brighten at seeing him awake. “Hey, Jack. Good to hear your voice.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack waved him off. “Didn’t answer my question. What happened to you?”

“Oh, um…” Mac suddenly looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Well, I’m fine, but they won’t let me out of the bed. And I think Bozer might kill me if I don’t follow through with treatment, so—”

“What. happened.” 

Mac gulped, running a hand through his damp-looking hair. “I kinda… drowned.”

That had not been the answer Jack had been expecting. “You… What? Kid, I leave you alone for like, four seconds, and you  _ drown? _ What happened?”

Mac told him about the cyclone, and the car, and shuddered his way through being trapped and drowning. And how Bozer had rescued and revived him, and was now insisting along with the doctors that Mac stay in bed and rest.

“Well, you can add one more person to the list of people who ain’t letting you out of that bed, hoss.”

“But I’m not even hurt!” Mac protested. “You’re the one who got hurt, we should all be fussing over you.”

“I’ve been good and fussed over, kiddo. Got my stitches all in, and I’m on some good meds, from the feel of it.” He looked over at Mac, who looked more distressed than Jack thought the situation warranted. 

“I’m sorry, Jack.”

_ This kid, I swear… _

“And what are you blaming yourself for now that you probably shouldn’t be?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

Mac looked a little chagrined. “You got shot. And it was my fault, if we had gone left like you had said, or if my door-shield had worked better… You wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

It figured. Instead of blaming Murphy and his stupid law, Mac blamed himself. 

“Hey, you ain’t responsible for every wrong thing that happens in this world, okay? Sometimes, I just get shot. I don’t like it, but it happens. It ain’t your fault.” Mac still looked miserable. “Hey, look at me. You got me out of there, and we’re both gonna be fine. You hear?” Mac nodded slowly. “Unless you managed to land your ass with pneumonia or some shit.”

Mac chuckled softly. “No, no pneumonia. Just some CPR bruises and a sore throat. I don’t even need to be in bed.” And as Jack watched, Mac tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

“Oh, no you don’t. You get back in that damn bed.”

Mac pouted, but stopped moving. “Or what? You can’t risk busting your stitches,” he asked petulantly.

Well if Mac could be juvenile about this, so could Jack. He held up his phone. “I’ll sic Bozer on you, boy, don’t think I won’t. Now you lay back down and rest up.”


	30. Day 30: Now where did that come from?

Adrenaline is a funny thing. 

Mac spends a lot of time with adrenaline coursing through his veins. His body reacts to his circumstances — far more often dangerous than not — and the jolt of what feels like pure energy electrifies his body. It’s one hell of a drug. 

He wouldn’t exactly call himself an adrenaline junkie. He’s not the kind of person that goes looking for danger, and the thought of jumping from someplace high to get a rush is a terrifying concept to him. But he won’t lie, when the feeling of his entire body lighting up shoots through him, he feels unstoppable. It’s euphoria, combustion,  _ fire. _ Somehow his brain goes faster, somehow his world looks clearer, and sometimes, he just has to laugh in the middle of a fistfight.

Jack nearly always ends a fight with a loud whoop, which Mac understood to be Jack’s own way of releasing adrenaline. Mac just laughs, an open-mouthed, wild expression of the sheer joy of living. Because that’s what adrenaline really is: proof that Mac’s still alive and kicking. 

Literally, kicking, as he takes down one of his two opponents with a boot to the chest. Mac’s nowhere near as good at Jack at martial arts, but he’s picked up a thing or two. 

The second guy, he takes a bit more time to go down. But down he goes, because he's no match for an adrenaline-fueled MacGyver. Especially when the MacGyver in question happens to be in a building with several very grabbable things to club someone over the head with.

He hears Jack’s signature whoop, and he knows that they’re in the clear. There’s blood on Mac’s knuckles, he tastes blood on his lips, and there’s blood splattered bright crimson on the floor. And adrenaline, sparking and dancing like fire, running rampant through him.

They make it out of the building, running and still laughing, and Mac has never felt more alive. Jack’s at his side, their mission is done. Hundreds of lives were saved. This is Mac’s reason for living. There was no way he could have gotten any sensation similar stuck in a lab at MIT. This is where he belongs. 

But as they pile into their getaway car, the adrenaline begins to wear off, and the euphoric electricity goes with it. Mac can feel the abrasions on his knuckles, his legs tired from sprinting, and suddenly, there’s a wave of dizziness and pain beyond description.

He must gasp or make some other noise, because Jack glances over at him. “Hoss, you’re pale. Paler than usual,” he modifies, because despite living in SoCal, Mac’s whiter than milk. “What is it?”

“I…” Mac has no idea what’s wrong. He felt fine not three seconds ago. He tries to locate a source of the pain blaring through him in the place of the adrenaline, and unbuttons his green-checked flannel. It sticks to his stomach, and Mac can see a growing red patch, stark against the white Henley under the flannel. “I’m bleeding.”

Jack glances back to him, and nearly swerves them into a stop sign. “No shit, you’re bleeding! What the hell happened?!” He pulls the car over to the curb, dashing around the car. He’s got Mac’s door open and is at his side in record time, hands bracing and checking over him.

“I dunno. I don’t remember.” And it’s true. Mac doesn’t remember getting hurt. There was no pain, nothing but a wildfire in his body as they fought. Dimly, he remembers that one of the guys had had a knife at one point, but he never felt it pierce him. He feels it now, a brilliant pain that dulls every sense and everything else around him. 

Jack pulls off Mac’s flannel, pressing it tight to the wound. The pressure hurts in a way Mac didn’t even think possible, and he tries to shrink away with a groan. 

“None of that, now. We gotta keep pressure on that, or you’ll bleed out.” Jack tears off his own jacket, wrapping it tightly around Mac, which draws a sound — something between a whimper, a moan and a scream — unbidden from Mac’s throat. “Sorry, sorry kiddo, but you know I have to. That should last you ‘til the hospital. It’s about ten minutes out. Think you can hold out that long?”

Mac nods, even though it exacerbates his nausea some. Ten minutes until they got to a hospital, he could do that. He had run far more dangerous races against a clock before. Jack moves Mac’s hand over the wound to keep pressure, and hops back into the driver’s seat. He floors it, and every movement, every shudder of the vehicle, sends a new wave of agony spiking through Mac from his abdomen. He’s suddenly exhausted, which doesn’t seem right, because just minutes ago he was laughing as he fought for his life. This is an entirely different kind of fight for his life, and he doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. He feels like sleeping.

Jack pinches his arm, hard. Mac yelps, and Jack doesn’t apologise. In the most serious tone Mac’s heard him use in a very long time, Jack growls out “You need to stay awake. You hear? You fight, Mac. I’m gettin’ you help as fast as I can, but you have to haul your own end here.”

Mac murmurs that he’ll try, cowed into submission because Jack sounds scared. It takes a whole lot to rattle the ex-Delta and CIA, so whatever has him so scared must be really bad. Mac’s brain feels stuffed with cotton, and he can’t think, but he resolves to try harder. Jack needs him awake. Mac can do that. 

And he manages it, though not without a few more hard pinches. Jack is merciless, but Mac trusts that he must have a good reason to be so. Before he can blink, he’s strapped in a gurney, and someone’s trying to stick an IV in his arm. It’s the wrong arm, the one that always blows out, but he can’t bring voice to his thoughts. Jack can, though, and he does.

“You’ll have to do it in the other arm, that one never works. He’s AB-negative. I’m a universal donor, if it comes to that. I think it was a knife. No, I didn’t see it. He doesn’t remember, says he didn’t feel it. No, I was a little busy trying to keep him from  _ bleeding out in the seat of my car! _ ”

Jack’s angry with someone, and Mac isn’t sure with whom. Not him, he thinks, because there would be a lot more “you’re giving me grey hair before my time” and “you’re the dumbest genius on the face of the earth, kid” peppered in there. He hopes whoever Jack’s mad at will take the hint and let Jack have his way. That’s how things always wind up going anyway, so it’s usually best not to put up a fight. 

But Mac can’t really devote any more brain power to that train of thought. Or any train of thought, really. His head is pounding, his arm hurts from where they’re digging for veins, and his stomach hurts as if the knife is still inside it. Every breath hitches, every movement sends another spike of pain jolting through him. It’s all-consuming, just like adrenaline is, and Mac finds himself submitting to the consumption, allowing himself to simply be washed away.

—————

Mac’s eyes flutter open. And squinch back shut immediately, with a hiss. The lights are too bright, and his head throbs dully. He thinks he’s drugged, because something tells him he should be hurting a lot more.

Jack is by his bedside, where he always is when Mac wakes up in hospital-drugged pain. And he looks like a terrifying combination of worried and angry. If Mac had all his wits about him, he would call it “righteous fury.” Mac knows he’s in for a lecture, probably about risking his life unnecessarily. He remembers a fight, he remembers seeping blood, he remembers a blinding pain. 

And Jack does light into him for hiding a life-threatening injury, for not immediately taking stock of himself to determine whether anything was wrong, for terrifying Jack, for bleeding all over the getaway car, for a lot more minor infractions that Mac couldn’t focus on. He knew Jack wasn’t really angry with him, or not too much. He yells because he worries, and he worries because he cares.

Jack trails off mid-rant to run a hand through Mac’s hair. “You’re still exhausted, Mac. You should go back to sleep. I’ll have plenty of time to get this through your thick skull while you’re off rotation for recovery.” He smiles at Mac, who smiles back weakly, only taking in every other word. Jack is beside him, protecting him. Which means Mac can sleep without worrying about his safety, because he’s always safe with Jack.


	31. Day 31: Torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!

Jack was the muscle, Mac was the brains. That’s how their partnership was supposed to work. It wasn’t that Mac didn’t have muscles or Jack didn’t have brains: they were each fairly well-endowed with both. But things tended to go better if Mac was the one thinking and Jack was the one punching.

Or being punched.

He tried to take all the focus he could off of Mac and onto himself, so that Mac could do his thing and think their way free. But the BadGuy of the week — some Canadian asshole trying to smuggle weapons to and from Russia — was having none of it.

The guy seemed to have some form of OCD, because he was obsessed with fairness. Mac and Jack went through the same things, indiscriminately. The same amount of blows in the same places. Waterboarded for the same length of time (he said it was 20 seconds each, but it felt like so much longer). The same amount of stripes in their backs from a bullwhip.

The problem was that, while Mac was strong and trained and had proven more times that Jack liked that he could handle torture, he was just not built like Jack. He’s wiry, lean to the point of skinny. Every crack of the bullwhip shook his whole frame, where Jack could just stand like a rock, immovable. Mac bore the pain silently, as he always did, while Jack was extremely vocal, yelling insults and lyrics and whatever else popped up into his head. And it killed him to watch Mac flinch at each  _ swish-crack! _ as it landed across his bare back.

When they were cut down, they fell to the ground. Jack was doing significantly better than Mac was, though he took no pride in it. Tears fell unbidden down Mac’s face, just as blood puddled on the hard floor. Jack took Mac’s hand gently in one of his own, rubbing his thumb across it. The other hand went to Mac’s hair, combing his fingers through the slightly-tangled blond mop. It was the one place he knew he could touch Mac and it wouldn’t hurt more. 

“‘M sorry, Jack,” Mac murmured once the tears dried up, and Jack just hushed him softly, as if he were a scared small child or a skittish animal. Mac was neither of those things, so he continued, while trying to sit up. “Sorry I broke down like that. I didn’t mean to. I’m just… I’m not as strong as you are.”

Jack kept his fingers running along Mac’s head. “Hoss, you are far from weak. You know that. You were given a flogging that would have totally broken a lesser man, dude. You got through, alive and without giving up a word.” 

Mac sniffled against more tears welling up in his eyes. “But I can’t take it like you can.”

“So that’s what’s got you all tied up in knots? The fact that we ain’t the same person? I mean, I know you’ve been jealous of this gorgeousness for years,” he forced a chuckle, trying to ease up some of the tension both in them and between them, “but you and me, we’re different people. Everyone handles pain differently, and everyone has a different threshold for it. Yours is higher than like, 95 percent of people’s. That’s nothing to sneeze at, kid, you’re strong. And I’m proud of you.”

Mac looked up at him, meeting Jack’s eyes for the first time since the whipping had started. “I couldn’t take the same amount of lashes, not as well as you.”

“This ain’t about comparing us, Mac. So I can take hits better. So what? You can kick my ass at every card game ever invented. And I can cook without setting the blender on fire. And you could take apart my entire car and rebuild it.”

“That sounds like permission…”

Jack laughed. “It most certainly was not, you stay away from my car, you menace.” Jack was rewarded with a small smile and an eyeroll from the still-despondent Mac. “No, what I said was, you  _ could  _ do it. You’re capable of it, and it’s something I couldn’t do in a million years.” 

Drying after waterboarding had made Mac’s hair wild. Jack had combed it back to normal by now, and was just allowing his hand to roam in it. “You’ve got nothing to prove, Mac. Not to me, not to anyone else.”

Mac relaxed under Jack’s touch, eyes slipping shut. “I think…” he started, trailing off with a soft hiss as a knot in his hair pulled (“sorry, sorry, go on hoss”). “I think I can get us out of here. It’s somewhat risky though.”

A risky plan was better than no plan, and Jack was very keen on getting out of there. The guy had been rotating through four different methods: waterboarding, the bullwhip, zapped with some fancy cattle prod, and regular old-fashioned beatings. None of these things were pleasant, and he hated watching them being done to Mac far more than he hated feeling them himself. 

If he were honest, he was worried about Mac. The treatment they had been given was hard on Jack, probably by design. What was difficult for Jack to go through was agony for Mac, plain and simple. He’d lost a lot of blood already through the floggings, and Jack was pretty sure Mac was developing pneumonia. Which wasn’t good. Much more of this, and the wounds would get infected, and Mac would get sick, and could easily die. And the only reasons Jack was any better off than Mac were because his skin was literally tougher, his body was more used to the experiences of torture, and his driving instinct to stay alive to protect his boy was always at its strongest when Mac was hurting.

But Mac’s risky plan was the best bet they had to escape, so it was a go. 

—————

The next time their Canadian tormentor entered their cell, Mac was shivering.  _ This plan had better work, _ Jack thought as he woke up and shook Mac awake too,  _ or he’s not gonna last much longer.  _

As Mac had predicted, this round of torture was going to be by the souped-up cattle prod. And Jack was going to go first. All part of the plan. As their captor shackled Jack to an uncomfortable wooden chair, he shared a look with Mac, who set to work uncuffing himself quietly from his own chair opposite Jack’s. The only way this would work was if the guy was distracted by zapping Jack, so really, the hardest part, Mac had said, would be letting it happen despite the fact that he would be free and could potentially stop it.

Jack took the burns and the electricity like a champ, taunting and yelling about the crazy shit he and his cousins used to do with cattle prods and electric fences and lightning rods. Mac picked the bastard’s pockets. And then sat down, quietly and calmly, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

What could be out of the ordinary with Jack shouting to drown out the pain he felt from electric burns and spastic convulsions?

After the full two minutes allotted to Jack, their captor then turned to Mac, for his “fair turn.” But as soon as the stun baton reached near Mac’s unprotected abdomen, he moved quicker than lightning to grab the tip of it. Jack could see him gritting his teeth against the pain of the current as he wrenched the weapon out of their captor’s grip, and then turned it on him.

The man went down at the first prolonged shock, and Mac then stood and clubbed him over the head with it, knocking him out. The keys he had stolen earlier made short work of Jack’s shackles.

“Hey, man, d’you think we could wait a sec to catch my breath? That one was a doozy,” Jack said, not moving from his chair as Mac freed him. And yes, what Jack said was true: he was in a lot of pain and wasn’t sure that standing up would be a great idea right then. But Mac was also shaking, and Jack wanted to give the young man a chance to recover himself too before they made their break for freedom.

Mac nodded, seeming too tired to form words, and nearly falling back into his own chair. Slowly, his breathing evened out some (even though it was still too shallow for Jack’s liking, from the lingering effects of waterboarding), and his shaking hands calmed. And Jack felt marginally better as well. They stood shakily, supporting each other, and hobbled to freedom.

The first pay-phone they found, Mac managed to hotwire so they could call Matty. 

“Jack? Mac? Is this you?”

Jack sighed in relief that she had picked up. “Yeah, Matty, it’s us. We’re out. Not sure where, exactly, but we’re safe, now.”

“Thank God,” Matty said, and she sounded relieved herself. “Riley, trace this!” she barked. “It’s our boys. Don’t worry, guys,” she spoke to them again. “We’ll get you home. Are either of you hurt too badly?”

The stripes across their backs were the worst of their injuries. They had each lost a lot of blood, and every movement hurt. But neither of them was in immediate danger of keeling over. Jack relayed all that, just as a soft ping came through from Matty’s end. 

“We’ve got you,” she said. “You’re not too far from here, stay where you are for ten minutes and we’ll get you boys home.”

—————

Of course, by “home,” what Matty meant was medical. But they both needed it, and welcomed the morphine drip with open arms. Even Mac, who always hated even medical drugging because it clouded his thoughts and judgement. 

They got their lacerations and electric burns treated, Mac’s pneumonia wasn’t serious, and both of them had concussions from being used as punching bags. In short, everything would hurt if they weren’t on the good shit. So they took what they could get. 

The team all visited them during their bedrest, of course. But it wasn’t until about a week later, when Mac called a firepit night, that everything began to feel right again.

In the hospital, Jack had had nightmares. He often had nightmares, of course, but these were fresh, about watching Mac be tortured before his very eyes. Watching him bleed and bleed and bleed until there was no more blood left in him. Watching electricity course through Mac’s body, stealing his breath and stopping his heart. Watching him struggle futilely against meaty arms pressing his head down into a basin of water until the struggles stilled and the bubbles stopped coming up, or seeing Mac thrash, tilted back with a wet rag over his face. Raw screams filled Jack’s nights, and choked whimpers of pain, and all the other sounds he hated to hear.

He knew Mac was dreaming too. Mac murmured in his sleep, various “I’m sorry”s and “I’m trying”s and “please don’t leave me”s. Torture was always hard on a person, but this one had done a bit of psychological damage to Mac as well, because he couldn’t withstand the same treatment as Jack, and it manifested itself in his nightmares.

It wasn’t the kid’s ego or pride that were hurting. Jack knew Mac didn’t really care about that. No, the problem was that he didn’t want Jack to think he was weak.  _ As if I ever could.  _ And if Jack thought he was weak, well, who would want to be saddled with a weak partner?  _ As if I would ever want to be reassigned, as if I would ever trust anyone else to watch my kid’s back. _

“Mac, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You’re the strongest person I know. You’ve lived through shit no one should have to, both before and after all this secret-agent stuff. You’re a genius and a badass, and I’ll say it as many times as I have to for you to believe it. You. Aren’t. Weak. And I’m. Not. Leaving.” 

Mac had just about cried at hearing the words spelled out point-blank like that. 

And now, sitting in his own house around his cheerful fire, Mac was laughing. Jack loved that sound, because it meant that Mac was safe and happy. It meant he was doing his job well. 

Their charades game was a disaster, just as it always was. Matty, Riley and Bozer against Mac and Jack was hardly fair, especially considering the fact that Mac thought that miming what looked honest-to-god like a hummingbird impression would convey Mulholland Drive (“The speed hummingbirds can flap their wings at is the same as the speed limit on Mulholland! What’s so hard about that?” “Mac, literally no one knows anything about hummingbirds but you.”) The girls and Bozer won by a complete landslide. 

Jack laughed, taking a swig of his beer. His back still twinged, and he could tell Mac’s did too sometimes by the worry-lines between his eyebrows, but tonight, Mac’s face was relaxed as Jack launched into telling Bozer a story about his favourite heifer when he was a kid. Riley was curled up in her chair, looking halfway asleep, Matty was smiling and chatting with Mac about some sort of geek thing in the Phoenix labs that she would let him look at in the morning, and Mac looked happy. He was healing, and so was Jack.

This was where they belonged, sitting safe at home with their family. It was an odd group of people, and maybe in other circumstances, in another life, they wouldn’t be nearly as close. But bonds forged in tears of both shared sorrow and mirth were not easily broken. This family was here to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! This has been a real rollercoaster of a month! Some days, I wrote chapters faster than I ever thought was possible, and some days, I needed to beat the ideas out of my brain with a stick (with the help of my darling FancyF1amingozz, love you babe!)
> 
> I'm immeasurably grateful to all of y'all who read and left comments and feedback on my first writing challenge. Love you, and have a lovely November!  
> Much love, holbytlanna


End file.
